The gray thumbnails appear if you have two versions of the same movie. example one 4K HDR and one in HD version in one folder (according Plexsupport article)
That is correct, the seek thumbnails are per video file, not per library entry. This is because each
“version” 4K and HD might be different length (one is directors cut and the other is theatrical).
That said, are the thumb generated for HDR movies entirely grey colour?, or are they just washed out? if they are washed out, then that is working as designed due to PMS not yet having tone-mapping from HDR to SDR support.