Absolutely.

But at the same time I cannot imagine reverting to code with no help of LLMs. Asking stackoverflow and waiting for hours to get my question closed down instead of asking LLM? No way.

Exactly, you can use it for some tasks. But why "explicitly forbid generative AI".

If you use AI to make repetitive tasks less repetitive, and clean up any LLM-ness afterwards, would they notice or care?

I find blanket bans inhibitive, and reeks of fear of change, rather than a real substantive stance.

Same.

Having an LLM helps, especially when you're facing a new subsystem you're not familiar with, and trying to understand how things are done there. They still can't do the heavy duty driver work by themselves - but are good enough for basic guidance and boilerplate.