auto complete

It's called lexical analysis or lexical tokenization. It existed long before LLMs (as long as high-level programming languages have, since lexical analysis of the source is the first step of compilation), it doesn't rely on stolen code, and doesn't consume a small village's worth of electricity. Superficial parallels with chatbots do not make it AI -- it's a fucking algorithm.

Besides, there is a world of difference between asking a clanker to spit out a Python function that multiplies two matrices, and putting the knock-off Shadowheart from TEMU in a million-dollar game.

Autocomplete isn't AI. It's string recognition which predates AI by about 35 years.

T9 predictive texting definitely didn't contain AI, but was absolutely a thing for a really long time.

I assume it refers to assets and mechanics that actively involve AI. If you're using Copilot to finish your switch case, I don't think that would count.

i think it's impossible totally exclude ai from a developing process nowadays (you googled something? you use ai. etc.), but not having generated images/assets/texts is realistic

And more and more engineers use genAI to generate code. Hell, even I do, because it's superb at getting the boilerplate ready from standard definitions, allowing me to focus on the important bits.

LLMs are also pretty great at extrapolating a good working document from basic requirements.

They're really just a quite knowledgeable but inexperienced intern, and any software engineer that refuses to utilise them to some extent will be left behind - just like those who refused to move to IDEs with syntax highlighting, autocomplete and other helper tools.