The original reason for the IntentFactory was that writing tests Intent creation would be possible without any Android framework dependencies. Back in the day, I didn't know if that could be tested without such a workaround. This workaround is not optimal, because it requires every Intent to be created with the IntentFactory.
In these modern times we now live, Espresso has Intent testing extensions. So it would be nice to get rid of the IntentFactory, refactor all production code that uses it, and move those Intent creation tests to use Espresso.