Are these starting to flower?

On the first pic i see a pistil. Autoflowering only means you don´t need to put them on 12 hours. It means the ruderalis genetics make them flowering automatically in any light schedule, so 5 weeks can be normal. i only grow autoflowers and yeah you are right, it is possible to run them on 24 hours but it puts them in stress. If you have temp problems at night you could schedule them a break during daytime. And the quality of your weed will get better because resin gets produced in the dark hours. You will get better results + saving energy. Just my two cents ;)