LLMs not being AI is one of the most common confidently strong statements I see spread here as fact pretty much every day.

We’ve had AI systems since 1956.

It simply refers to any system designed to perform a cognitive task that would normally require a human. For an LLM that task is generating natural language. For an Atari chess opponent it’s playing chess. They’re both still AI - narrow AI, but AI nonetheless.

People seem to expect general intelligence from these systems, and when they don’t get it, statements like this pop up. But AGI is not synonymous with AI. It’s also an AI system, just a subcategory of AI - same as GenAI is. No company claims to have a true AGI system.