I’ve actually met people that claim they can’t tell if something is CGI. And there are people who defend the Prequels saying they can’t tell that the Clonetroopers are CGI.
I assume these people aren’t lying. There’s obviously some psychological aspect to this that isn’t well understood. To me, AoTC mostly looks like glossy shit, with some exceptions (some shots of Coruscant look cool to me).
They’re definitely lying, and most of those things have not aged well. The only exceptions are things like the scale miniatures, the Italy and Tunisia locations etc. Though I’d say certain elements of TPM hold up better, perhaps because of less blue-screen stages being used? Certain things in the movies seem intentionally designed to look like CGI which is weird. Like the trooper visors are way to fake-shiny, it could have been done differently.