ML is most certainly AI. I had a visceral feeling you'd respond with this. Sorry but what ever magic you have in your head isn't AI -- this is real AI and you're moving goal posts like alot of people tend to do.

You have single cell organisms which are able to sense their nearby surroundings and make a choice based on the input - they can differentiate food from other materials and know how to move towards it. They are a system which can process complex input and make a decision based on that input. Yet you wouldn't call a basic single cell organism intelligent in any way. The term usually used is that it's simply a biochemical reaction that makes them process the input and make a choice, but you wouldn't call it intelligence and in fact no biologist ever would.

I feel the same principle should apply to software - yes, you've built a mathematical model which can take input and make a decision based on the internal algorithms, if you trained it to detect background in video then that's what it will do.

But it's not intelligence. It's no different than the bacteria deciding what to eat because certain biological receptors were triggered. I think calling it intelligent is one of the biggest lies IT professionals tell themselves and others.

That's not to say the technology isn't impressive - it certainly is. But it's not AI in my opinion.