No that's not true.

I've worked at a company whose product involved some decently advanced computer vision, marketed as AI (which isn't incorrect).

I've also seen companies that were doing machine learning before the LLM boom, who remarketed their machine-learning-based product as AI (which isn't incorrect).

If you put AI on a project the average consumer will think it’s using ChatGPT or something like that

I mean I agree with you just that the popular perception of that word has changed

Apart from when they're talking about AI generated videos or images, or the marketing people talking about an AI powered rice cooker https://tefalph.com/cooking-appliances/easy-rice-plus-rice-c... or people watching films where an AI takes over

It also means Diffusion in the context of images and videos.

Or anything that used to be called machine learning, in the context of some consumer appliances.

Or sometimes basic image recognition.