I thought the auto pilot disengages automatically when you move the controls?
It does.
The 777 pilot who analyzed and explained what was going on says otherwise. It will cause a master warning or something along those lines, but not cause AP to disengage. Which makes sense.
Let's leave the incident investigation to the professional investigators anf authorities, shall we?
Source? In the Juan Brown (a 777 pilot YouTuber) video (https://youtu.be/cslSQB5mgyc) referenced in another comment, he specifically states that you must physically fight the autopilot for control if it's engaged.
On this aircraft you must move the column with something like 20-25 pounds of force before the autopilot decides that you are overriding it.
If you listen to the ATC audio someone posted above, you hear the autopilot disconnect sound at 0:56 which is well after the incident began and all the other alarms were going off. This doesn't make sense. Did they not realize the plane was still on autopilot and were trying to hand-fly it and override the controls? I'm not jumping to any conclusions but it's very possible this was a normally functioning airplane.