This is so weird. I don't speak languages that distinguish between animate and inanimate "they." I never learned this difference in other languages. Yet recently, for some reason, inanimate "they" feels very wrong to me.

"I found some clothes, but they were dirty."

Who was dirty?

"I looked at the tables. Someone must've brought them here by mistake."

Brought whom? Who are talking about?

I even had to double-check the rules. Apparently, it's permissible. 

The AI says the confusion may be connected with the fact that "they" is rarely used to refer to inanimate objects, though it was unable to provide sources for that information.

Previously I said one of the best ways to improve a language is to introduce new everyday words. I wonder if a language can benefit from this separation and the introduction of a new "they," or if I just somehow developed a completely unnecessary bias that I should unlearn. Technically, there is no ambiguity, so it's probably the latter.