i have been day banned on a no-ai place for mentioning npc ai before.

I can see why they might have done that. When people say AI they mean neural nets and large language models, not a bunch of if else scripts. NPC AI often cheats because it knows everything about the world it’s in, it doesn’t act like an bunch of individuals experiencing that world from a singular viewpoint. So you can go really simple with its coding, far below the level but most people would consider to be artificial intelligence by current definitions.

That’s why often times it does stupid things like been unable to see the player simply because the player is crouched down, even though they are demonstrably visible. The script basically just checks if the player is crouched in grass, and if they are to ignore them. It knows where the player is, but it’s code is telling it to do nothing about that.