It's the transporter problem, the copies of all the crew the transporter spits out are indistinguishable from the original even to the subject themselves so everyone accepts it, but the nagging question still exists, is it still you after being molecularly deconstructed and rebuilt somewhere else?

If Data is "alive" enough that people accept him as a friend and a trusted crew mate.....does it matter how he came to be or how his brain works or if he has a soul? I argue no. Our biology causes us to seek attachment to people or things for safety and comfort, and it doesn't really care too much if it's your stuffed animal or a mother's embrace providing the comfort/familiarity.

The only real question is if it's ethical to make these things work for us if they demonstrate some self awareness, they're programmed to "like" it but how much different is it from psychologically conditioning a human from birth to be slave labor? Right now AI are more in the "things" category than "person" category but it won't be long before that line blurs even more and we have our own versions of Data working in our homes doing dishes and laundry. Trek serves to get people asking these questions before they become real dilemmas that we have to face here in real life.

Just remember, transformer (LLM) based AI is not the only kind of AI being cooked up right now.