Before AI, there were also stories of people who had no background in software engineering who wrote entire applications using their fingers. This was called "learning to be a software engineer".

I don't mean to snipe at AI, because it really does seem to have set more people on the path of learning, but I was writing VB5 apps when I was 14 by copying poorly understood bits and pieces from books. Now people are doing basically the same but with less typing and everyone thinks it's a revolution.