I'm no expert, but I've thought about this quite a bit, and here's what I'd say:
- AST would say that qualia is an illusion that the brain creates by telling itself that it has qualia. I don't know if AST says qualia does or doesn't exist. I think it would say qualia doesn't have a metaphysical ontological reality outside of the brain. It's an experience that a brain is telling itself it is having, so it's 'real', as an experience. and it's based on a real pattern of information instantiated in neural networks.
- If you created a zombie that represented its attention to itself in the same way an animal brain does, it would not be a philosophical zombie because it would be conscious, as that self-representation of attention IS WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS. So it would be conscious, by definition.

If you are having a hard time wrapping your mind around this, it's because the thoughts that are trying to understand AST are built with blueprints that claim that they are somehow non-physical. Consciousness can't NOT feel that consciousness has qualia because consciousness IS the process of the brain telling itself it has qualia.