This may be a stupid question, but what is the point of making an AO if you cannot use it? From what I have read, you aren't supposed to use your AO in your diffuse if you are using a PBR workflow
I was meaning from a more broad perspective, you can still use the AO in PBR map to help figure areas out and just hide it at the end. Plus Quixel uses AO maps to help with masking stuff like that