The pilots could not turn off the automatic comms which were saying that they were incapacitated. They could turn off the emergency autoland feature as a whole with a press of a button (someone else linked a source for the FAQ).

Non-emergency autoland like you describe had been around for a long time. But you have to manually pick your flight plan and approach, and at least point the aircraft in the general direction of the flight plan so that the AP will engage and handle the rest.

This is a totally different beast because the emergency autoland picked the route and approach, managed the AFCS and comms, and then did the normal autoland stuff after all that. Garmin’s emergency autoland only came out a few years ago.