I guess that was a lie, too. Though it was more tolerated and accepted per our norms as a society. Though I do see the gray area now too.
The gray area is in the gap of "how much" help is given. Does a tool that does most of the coding, thinking and implementation for you still count as your work if you gave it the goal, guidance and architecture? Yes. And what I want to know as the peer of the person using such a tool, call it AI, is to what degree it did the work and how much of it you validated.
Since the other tools pre-AI were more validated by the humans using them, I as the peer know the outputs pass a basic level of quality. I know the human was mostly involved in their production and creation. AI breaks this assumption and now many humans are producing outputs that require an unpredictable level of review by peers - as this is a big change in the norms of our society, I think its OK to call it out as a requirement to label output as AI-assisted/generated and/or to specify how much and how AI was involved and call it unethical if not done so. (I think it's not necessary or helpful to call out the use of the pre-AI era tools as unethical or a lie, even though they are too).