I do know their names. However I'm not in the field and there are many cases in recent years of high-profile scientists putting their weight behind highly dubious claims. Thanks for the advice, by the way.

Note that I'm not disputing the validity of the counterexample itself.

That's fair. If you're familiar with mathematics culture though, you'd know that "LLM hype" is not really in their blood and is certainly not something that gains you PR points. I think it's safe to take their comments at face value. I do think the ice is beginning to thaw though and perhaps in the next few years, there will begin to become more of a hype phase in math if some really high profile problems begin to fall to AI, although one might argue at that point that the hype would be deserved.