Emergence literally means to create more potential than the mere sum of parts.

By this technical definition, the moment it did something useful which the parts themselves could not do was an emergent moment.

Remember the very first release? GPT scared OpenAI so much they didn't release it to the public until after pressure from competing open source alternatives began to surface.

Maybe you want to check the basic algorithms? When where they first demonstrating non gibberish?

Most changes since have been refinements.