There's a simpler explanation: they are comparing LLM performance to that of regular humans, not perfection.
Where do you think LLMs learned this behavior from? Go spend time in the academic literature outside of computer science and you will find an endless sea of material with BS citations that don't substantiate the claim being made, entirely made up claims with no evidence, citations of retracted papers, nonsensical numbers etc. And that's when papers take months to write and have numerous coauthors, peer reviewers and editors involved (theoretically).
Now read some newspapers or magazines and it's the same except the citations are gone.
If an LLM can meet that same level of performance in a few seconds, it's objectively impressive unless you compare to a theoretical ideal.
