I have a very close friend who happens to be an AI researcher at a leading company in the field, so I stay pretty well informed with regard to the latest breakthroughs. I get the occasional peek under the hood, so to speak.
I think it's effectively inarguable that the latest round of bots have powers of inference and some capacity for reason. You can prove this yourself by heading to any of the newer image generation toys and asking them to mash up two or three unrelated concepts.
Pause for a second and take yourself through the logical leaps required to do this. I think you'll begin to appreciate that there are proper minds at work behind the scenes of these goofy-ass web apps.
I don't mean to imply that these algorithms are self-aware, or that they have feelings or need certain rights. All I'm saying is that, as a necessity of their function, it is clear that they are already reasoning their way through problems in a creative and organic way.
I wish more people would recognize this and attempt to reckon with it.