Only by twisting the meaning of plagiarism to be defined as word-for-word.
Universities intensively train students to accept plagiarism so long as the copy is sufficiently reworded (and hopefully referenced). That sick and pointless system is ironically being exposed by student usage of LLMs.
That of course doesn't mean that every instance of plagiarism is actually detected but the principles are there.
Auckland University https://learningessentials.auckland.ac.nz/writing-effectivel... says:
Direct quotes from other sources should only be used when absolutely necessary. It is best to paraphrase the quote or summarise the ideas when you use other people’s writing.
in your assignment, you need to ensure that there is enough difference in form between the original [words] and your own summarised version. This may be achieved by simplifying the ideas, as well as using a different sentence structure or sentence order to present those ideas.
Students are forced to do it here in NZ. I find it dishonest and pointless. Although generally I'm rather cynical about the value of university education here.
Searching for "paraphrase" comes up with other suggestions which demonstrate that students are searching for tools to do it for them. That isn't a recent development with LLMs.
So from what I see OP's claim is bunk: they want you to paraphrase, but doing that and citing your source isn't close to plagiarism.
If it's cited, it's usually by definition not plagiarism. Omitting the reference is passing the work off as your own, but providing that information is giving credit to where it is due.
Other institutions do hold more of a view that plagiarism is not possible with credit, but they will then consider the first mentioned paper as some other form of academic violation.
Even the narrow definition institutions don't view plagiarism purely as misrepresenting sources of ideas as yourself, or self-plagiarism would not be a thing. It ends up as something more like: passing off original ideas from another work as having originated in this current work.
This means that every single thing they write throughout their studies is some regurgitation of stuff they find elsewhere.
To avoid having a reference after every single sentence, we need to allow them to pretend that some of the stuff they read is common knowledge, and can thus be passed on as such, without reference.
But if someone else actually wrote the sentence, that would be plagiarism, hence writing it in your own words.
Granted, teaching soft skills is hard but English teachers seem to have universally given up trying at all.