[empyrrhicist]

Can actors audio-visually mimic their characters with increasingly convincing realism, and can they be artificially scaled, duplicated, extended, and applied for just the cost of a bit of hardware and electricity?

It is not sensible to hand wave the "human like" learning process and ignore economic reality. This area requires careful thought about how our notions of individual rights apply to new technologies, and what kind of economic system can exist as a result.