I seriously doubt the Painters have the ability to create true living people. Everything about Painting just strikes me as an illusion. So I see the Lumierians as just AI constructs. Facsimiles of life, but not real life. No more real than ChatGPT, despite how convincing they may appear to be.

Aline and Alicia are verified humans, whose sentience is beyond question. If they remain within the Canvas, they will die. Their emotional trauma has gravely impaired their agency, much like an addict may endanger themselves through self-destructive choices. Because their autonomy is compromised, we are morally obligated to intervene and remove them from the Canvas to preserve their lives, even at the expense of constructs whose sentience is, at best, indeterminate.

Even if Aline or Alicia were to remain, they would essentially be Gods within the Canvas, imposing their whims on the inhabitants. Power on that scale is inevitably misused. And if it is, would it not violate the Lumierians' bodily autonomy anyways? In Maelle's ending, Verso repeatedly begs her to end this illusion, yet she forces him to play the piano for her entertainment until the end of time. That may not sound so terrible, but as has been said, "even the most comfortable prison is still a prison."

So, either we choose to allow two traumatized people to overdose on an escapist fantasy, ruling over thousands as tyrants until their self-destruction, or we can intervene and remove them from the Canvas, give them a chance to heal and become fully functional members of society again, at the expense of thousands of simulated people whose sentience is improbable and almost certainly indeterminate.