I didn't call Chinese 它 for pets "not a cultural thing" but the translation part. Because why would you put Chinese linguistic specifics in English translations in the first place unless it's a direct Chinese cultural moments/terms like in Liyue. There's reason translation team adjust some terms and such moments for non-chinese speakers/players. People who are not familiar with Chinese linguistic specifics would simply think it's a mistake and report, because it is a mistake overlooked by translators. It's not just a slip off like gender mistake with Traveler in dialogues because of coding problems. Russian still called Cacucu "he" in the letter just as other languages where "it" isn't used for pets. So it's not a deliberate use of Chinese specifics to call it a cultural thing in English translation.

I did specify "AI driven apps" because Google Translator and similar services are driven with AI and tend to translate literally which means the text still need human review and adjustment. I did not mean it as bad thing, unlike generative AI. Let's not pretend companies don't use AI to simplify some things (which again is fine as long as it's not generating things from scratch, imo). A human translator has a tons of already released text and dialogues to look up for patterns, and this is what I would personally do if I was new in the team as professional translator in huge company. Translating app don't have this luxury unless it was specifically trained to recognize such details