Using Tridion Sites 9.6 Core Service.REST API saving component

Question

While I am going through Tridion Sites 9.6 Core Service.REST API for saving an item it is mentioned as follows

"/v{api-version}/items": {
  "post": {
    "tags": [
      "Item"
    ],
    "summary": "Creates an object based on a specified request model and saves it to the database. For versioned items, a check-in is performed by default.",
    "description": "This operation returns an instance of 'IdentifiableObject' type, as implemented by one of the following:<ul class=\"model-list\"><li><span>ApprovalStatus</span></li><li><span>Bundle</span></li><li><span>BusinessProcessType</span></li><li><span>Category</span></li><li><span>Component</span></li><li><span>ComponentTemplate</span></li><li><span>Folder</span></li><li><span>Group</span></li><li><span>Keyword</span></li><li><span>MultimediaType</span></li><li><span>Page</span></li><li><span>PageTemplate</span></li><li><span>Publication</span></li><li><span>Schema</span></li><li><span>SearchFolder</span></li><li><span>StructureGroup</span></li><li><span>TargetGroup</span></li><li><span>TargetType</span></li><li><span>TemplateBuildingBlock</span></li><li><span>TridionProcessDefinition</span></li><li><span>User</span></li></ul>\n\n",
    "operationId": "Create",
    "consumes": [
      "application/json"
    ],
    "produces": [
      "application/json"
    ],

Does it mean we can pass formatted json (earlier we used to create a formatted xml and pass to component.content or component.Metdata) and create component programmatically? Note: we are yet to migrate to 9.6.