You're right about the verbiage being amusing.

All big generators have an exciter coil that is used to generate the magnetic field. It has the advantage of allowing voltage regulation through adjustment of the field, rather than after the fact, which would be far less efficient.

In both motors and generators, there is an efficiency hit related to the need to supply power in order to generate the field, but when you scale up the system, it actually becomes more efficient to use the electromagnet. With the rare-earth mineral shortage, it makes even more sense.