It is being "used", yes, but to "great effect"? We don't see any "effects" yet - that's the whole point - we don't know yet whether the hype is justified. Time will tell.
My wife used it in her neuroscience research to see which protein would go through certain tissue barriers (or that's what I understood). It doesn't have the ability to predict interaction with cells and other proteins, and it's not 100%, but it's still useful.
How do you know it's not being useful in research already? Biology is a slow field, you won't see papers mentioning it for months if not years. If I know one person team that uses it, there must be plenty.
Sure...we don't know things that haven't happened yet. When a biology paper is published that leads to actual advantages for real life patients or for new technologies to be built that actually solve real world problems, then the hype will begin to be justified. Being "used in research" is not justification for hype. Adding lines to researchers' CVs doesn't actually improve the human condition in any way.
Well it has been useful for scientists so far, and it's a super early technology. The hype helps researchers know about it, and it will undoubtedly be in papers soon since it's being used today.
Most of this is probably just marketing/partnerships. It's way too early to tell. The only way to tell whether Alphafold is truly a breakthrough is to wait and see if it passes the test of time.
