You’re basing your argument off a CNN journalist paraphrasing a pilot complaint made to the FAA that isn’t referenced.

As neither of us have actually read the pilot complaint, I don’t know. I would imagine either the pilot wrote auto stab trim and a journalist paraphrased it to autopilot because it’s a word non aviation people know, or the pilot disabled both at the same time and blamed it on autopilot. This wouldn’t surprise me as part of the issue is that MCAS is markedly different to other failure modes of auto trim, which is why it should have been clearly marked as such in the training materials.

To be clear, the pilot colleagues I’m stealing my opinion from here have no issue with the engine placement or existence of MCAS, but the fact that’s it’s integrated into an existing system but behaves differently without proper training plus the fact that it doesn’t use the redundant AoA sensor.