Have you come across this in your travels?

this is what it is.....

Multi-area AF-assist Illuminator

Multi-Area AF-Assist Illuminator, built in to select Speedlights, can be used with all focus-areas of cameras compatible with the Nikon Creative Lighting System to give you autofocus shooting capability in extremely dim lighting.

If light in a scene is so low that the camera's AF system cannot "see" the subject, and thus cannot focus on it, turning on the Speedlight's AF Assist Illuminator will project a patterned beam of light on the subject; the AF system can then achieve autofocus by focusing on that pattern.

I've seen in before on a guests point & shoot (MOB quickly put it away after I gave her the death stare) but the photographer.. really!

this is the result.... thank you Nikon

It's not a bug, it's a "feature", one that I usually turn OFF on all my still cams right away...

In that lighting, there's no reason that should have been active, IMO, I've only seen it when it's fairly dark, and at that point I'd have an on camera LED brightening it up enough the still cam should still be able to grab focus.