AFAIK, it's a bit more than hyper-parameter tuning as it can also make non-parametric (structural) changes.
Non-parametric optimization is not a new idea. I guess the hype is partly because people hope it will be less brute force now.
Perhaps LLM-guided Superoptimization: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization>
I recall reading about a stochastic one years ago: <https://github.com/StanfordPL/stoke>
It's an LLM-powered evolutionary algorithm.