QR codes do not qualify as Augmented Reality at all. "QR" is a data encoding format. It does not augment reality in any way.

The only tangential use of QR codes in AR is when a QR code is sometimes used as an anchor point, but the QR code isn't AR, it's merely an anchor point, and there are many other types of anchor points used for AR that are not QR codes.

If you're pointing a phone at a QR code and see some 3D thing pop out of it, that also isn't QR being AR, that's QR encoding data and the phone doing whatever it wants with that data. It could just as easily be a logo causing the AR device to do the same thing, or really any other kind of marker the AR program recognizes. QR codes are just convenient as they encode various kinds of data, so the program that scans it can react to what data is encoded in the QR code.