At least until recently any introductory machine learning course would teach linear regression and clustering, the latter as an example of unsupervised learning.

Sure, but as a stepping stone.

There is no model here, there is no neural net.

Yes! AI is any sort of machine intelligence and its been around for more than 2 decades, the 80s even had its own "AI winter" after all.

There is no intelligence here, only pattern matching.

The same could be said about many people.

You're only saying this because we're in a hype cycle. Circa 2018, there was no problem at all with calling this AI: in fact, it was normal.

Back then we still called things image classifiers or machine learning, and when you said AI most people probably had an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Cortana flash in their mind.

it was not.