The generation of the content was done intentionally though. If they saved the output and you visited their site it wasn’t really generated for you (rather just static content served to you).

What an odd way of framing this. Every bit of human generated content was served to you "against your will". You are making no sense.

Sounds like a gold star ego purity thing to me.

I.e., they are proud to have never intentionally used AI and now they feel like they have to maintain that reputation in order to remain respected among their close peers.