LLMs/GPTs are essentially "just" statistical models. At this point the argument becomes more about philosophy than science. What is "intelligence?"
If an LLM can do something truly novel with no human prompting, with no directive other than something it has created for itself - then I guess we can call that intelligence.
definition: new or unusual in an interesting way.
ChatGPT can create new things, sure, but it does so at your directive. It doesn't do that because it wants to which gets back to the other part of my answer.
When an LLM can create something without human prompting or directive, then we can call that intelligence.
I was a little bored of the novel I have been reading so I sat down with Gemini and we collaboratively wrote a terrible novel together.
At the start I was promoting it a lot about the characters and the plot, but eventually it starting writing longer and longer chapters by itself. Characters were being killed off left right and center.
It was hilariously bad, but it was creative and it was fun.
Is that wrong?
Look, your argument ultimately reduces down to goalpost-moving what "novel" means, and you can position those goalposts anywhere you want depending on whether you want to push a pro-AI or anti-AI narrative. Is writing a paragraph that no one has ever written before "truly novel"? I can do that. AI can do that. Is inventing a new atomic element "truly novel"? I can't do that. Humans have done that. AI can't do that. See?