It's not "sloppy use of words", both the term and the practice of AI have been around for far longer than today's probabilistic models. In particular, decision trees and similar are some of the simplest forms of AI.

The difference between an AI and a "regular" bunch of if/else statements is, in my opinion, the ease of adding new rules to the system. That's why something like Prolog counts as AI.

I get what you are saying.

With a technical audience, it is better to use actual terminology.

However the general public does not have the knowledge to understand these. These are the people using ChatGPT and for them it is AI. We can correct them, but it's likely they won't care.