[majormajor]

AI's a very soft term, and there's long been a technical vs "casual" split in what it means. Five or ten years ago you'd say your photo was retouched with AI dust removal, say, and we'd all know what that means. And that there was a big gulf between that and the sci-fi "AI" of Blade Runner or Her or Star Wars, etc.

The user interface to Chat GPT and similar tools, though, has made a lot of people think that gap is gone, and that instead of thinking they are using an AI tool in the technical sense, they now think they're talking to a full-fledged other being in the sci-fi sense; that that idea has now come true.

So a lot of people are careful to distinguish the one from the other in their writing.