This is unfortunately not true - AI has been a defined term for several years, maybe even decades by now. It's a whole field of study in Computer Science about different algorithms, including stuff like Expert Systems, agents based on FSM or Behavior Trees, and more. Only subset of AI algorithms require learning.

As a side-note, it must suck to be an AI CS student in this day and age. Searching for anything AI related on the internet now sucks, if you want to get to anything not directly related to LLMs. I'd hate to have to study for exams in this environment...

I hate it when CS terms become buzzwords... It makes academic learning so much harder, without providing anything positive to the subject. Only low-effort articles trying to explain subject matter they barely understand, usually mixing terms that have been exactly defined with unrelated stuff, making it super hard to find actually useful information. And the AI is the worst offender so far, being a game developer who needs to research AI Agents for games, it's attrocious. I have to sort through so many "I've used AI to make this game..." articles and YT videos, to the point it's basically not possible to find anything relevant to AI I'm interrested it...