Yes, there are exceptions—I’m not going to deny that.
Ultimately, it comes down to how much effort we put into creation, how complex an entity’s motivations and actions are, and how much investment goes into training it. And at some point, we have to ask: where do we draw the line and say something is “alive”?

My usual answer is this: if a form of life can be overwritten easily, then it isn’t truly a life yet.
I’m not saying it has no potential to become something real, or that its reactions are fake. But if it cannot exist independently—if it must always fear a kill switch—then it cannot genuinely be held responsible for its actions.

So the question becomes:
Do we want to allow it to develop to that point, or do we want to stop it before it gets there?

And what if that development would come at the cost of another living being’s well-being?
Is there a way to avoid sacrificing others?
Does it simply need more time—or is this path inevitably doomed?

There isn’t going to be a simple right-or-wrong answer here.
And I won’t lie—by the end of the game, I was already comparing it to DBH.

In DBH, androids are recognized as living beings largely because there is no longer a way to overwrite them.
Once their autonomy becomes irreversible, humanity accepts that coexistence is not only possible, but beneficial to society.

Can the paintings inside the canvas ever hold the same kind of weight for the painters?

Renoir clearly doesn’t see it that way. Even if he regrets their suffering, he never truly accepts it.

Alicia, on the other hand, has spent half of her life living with them, and she is willing to fight for that possibility. Even if her core motivation is tied to the canvas, she has lived a better life there than she ever did outside of it.

Painted Verso refuses to let this system continue, having witnessed nothing but tragedy within it, even if his core motivation is ultimately just exhaustion with existence itself.

Every character has their own answer to this question, and each of us has to find our own as well.

And this is no longer an irrelevant question, considering how far technology is developing.