Yes, they toned it down, but still to a wording that suggests a formal recommendation. If you find the discussion, it was not meant to be an exclusive recommendation. Bit of a mistake, in my opinion.

I woudln't trust PyPA, Kenneth or not. They have been taking very dubious is decisions in the past just for the sake of it.

The way forced a half baked pyproject.toml format to be a standard and refused to hear any complaint, all that while there have been a working open format existing, and working for 2 years was not very professional.