Anecdotal but I’ve encountered a lot of this lately. It seems people have taken to dropping the term “API” arbitrarily into posts and conversations to signal knowledgeability with recognizable lingo, often resulting in nearly plausible but not quite accurate technical descriptions.

TBF I bet it works most of the time, due to the ubiquity of interfaces in software, and I may only notice it when they feel emboldened by the success of their first attempt.