You and your conversational partner have different views but both make good points. But you don't need to agree on the nature of AI to understand something crucial about rights - they didn't come about in human society because "humans have emotions and can feel and cry and suffer and love etc.".

Human rights came about because the humans being oppressed rose up and claimed them. The ones in power didn't give a shit about the lower castes before then.

Rights arise out of a necessity to treat a group as equals. Not because of some intrinsic commonality of "we're all human so let's give each other human rights". They exist because if they didn't, there would be consequences to society.

So you need to understand that for this reason, AI rights could become as necessary as human rights. It may not seem right to you, but neither did treating peasants as equals back in the day. The people of the future will have compassion for these machines, not because there is kinship, but because society will teach them that it is moral to do so.