Yep, that is actually what is going on under-the-hood. Any card link that doesn’t have a title/alias is being automatically converted to a little widget with the card name inserted dynamically. You can test yourself by just removing the title from an existing card link – it will turn into one of the new-style widgets.
The homogenization plan is to have it so that all card links just show the title (whether auto or provided) as the little widget in the editor, but if you put your cursor next to the link it will expand into the markdown link syntax. This is what already happens with inline images, latex blocks, and mermaid blocks.
Will ship this in 3.1.1 and see what everyone thinks. 