Even if we claim that "real AI" is a system that can actively perform at human levels in creative tasks, I wouldn't believe that it will always be in the future. However, I don't think this is very near, and I think this is sort of what people are implying when they talk about AI. To me saying "general AI is what we're exploring and making mini-discoveries in" is a kind of apology. Unfortunately, this apology pushes us into a grey area where "AI" is really just the scientific artifice. That's not the same as AI that has auto-creative capacities.