it's obviously not repeating an existing answer verbatim

Not verbatim in the sense that the words are different doesn't make it thinking. Also when we say 'humans think' that means a lot more than only 'new question generates correct answer' or 'smart autocompletion'. See a lot of other comments here for details.

But again: I laid out 2 possibilities explaining why the question might in fact not be new, nor the data, so I'm curious which of the 2 (or another) explains the situation you're talking about.

You're saying it's nothing "special" but we're not discussing whether it's special, but whether it can be considered thinking.

Apologies, with 'special' I did in fact mean 'thinking'