You've got it upside down. Human contact is cheap. If you want to talk to another human being in real life, I bet you can do so within 5 minutes. What has actually happened is that the internet has created a close enough simulacrum of human contact that is as addicting as any drug. It provides a cheap hit of socialization, and you can fill every last inch of your life with it.
Listen to a podcast in the car, walk around while scrolling social media, watch Twitch streams while doing the dishes. It doesn't actually fulfill your needs but it feels like it does. Gen AI is just a way to generate more of that kind of content than is possible, removing any human element, making something supposedly just as tasty, but it's empty calories.
I'm fairly gregarious, and find it fairly easy to approach strangers (if I have to). Yes, a lot of human contact can be had for fairly cheap.
However, I'm also aware that this is far from "normal" -- the average person is not this way (at least, not today). How/why things have come to be this way, I cannot pinpoint, but our lives have gotten progressively busier to the point where many of us choose convenience over "richness/fullness of experience".
However, my point is still valid, in that if you are an average person today, the prevailing social gestalt in America is "mind your own business, and don't talk to (or approach) people in the street".
Yes, weird folks like me, who are willing to be more vulnerable (what if the person you just said "Good morning!" to cusses you out?) will be able to get human contact for cheap, but high-quality Human contact is definitely waning.
P.S. Also agree with you that GenAI (and other modern technologies) are providing a frictionless existence, while also removing the richness and meaning that comes with the friction. It's the "soma" from Huxley's "Brave New World".
Listen to a podcast in the car, walk around while scrolling social media, watch Twitch streams while doing the dishes. It doesn't actually fulfill your needs but it feels like it does. Gen AI is just a way to generate more of that kind of content than is possible, removing any human element, making something supposedly just as tasty, but it's empty calories.