Yeah, a bunch of people started going on witch hunts against the people where were obviously using AI (eg ~30 second solve times) and also anyone who had "AI" anywhere in their bio.
IMO the levels it got to was wildly out of proportion, even if these people were cheating (say what you will about AI, but if the rules say not to use it and you do: you're a cheater) but maybe I would have felt differently if the timezones meant I could take part, rather than waking up to drama.
Just to not feed the witch hunt further, note that human 30 second solve times can be entirely possible for the easiest puzzles, with enough experience, practice, and a bit of risk-taking; see e.g. https://adventofcode.com/2021/leaderboard/day/1 part 1. But the 4 second solution times we saw last year are not, no matter how you look at it.
sounds like the competition had challenges even before AI or any rules about AI or not.
I never followed this challenge aside from doing a few 10 years ago in college.
If speed to problem completion matters though, then question release time will be brutal for some.