I tried that in Bard too. First time it replied 7 letters and no code. Second time it said 8 with code snippet,

    d a v i d j l

3rd time, it said 8 again with code snippet,

    davidjl

and it counted out the letters e.g. "d = 1 letter"

I asked it "Are you sure?" after the 3rd one, it corrected itself to say 7 letters + counting out.

It's not using Python. Code generation seem accidental and just part of its output.