Bare ground is allowed in lots of cases. The requirement is that insulated ground wires must be primarily green (IE green with yellow stripe is okay), but this is actually not new.

They must be > 6 awg to pull black and use green tape on the ends.

See 250.119.

This has been the case for a very long time though, at least since 2007 NEC. I don't have handy copies around for before then.