Anyway, the replicants as depicted in all incarnations are clearly biological constructs and not mechanical, so while they're certainly artificial the notion of whether or not they're "robots" to begin with is highly debatable.

I would say it's not even debatable, the issue at the heart of the conflict in the original Blade Runner and continued in 2049 is that the Nexus-7 was made so close to humans that they basically are humans, at least in a biological sense. Maybe the earlier models were more android-like, but later they're basically just manufactured people.

This is why in 2049 we see >!Deckard, a human, and Rachael, a replicant, were able to conceive a child, who was otherwise born perfectly normal other than not being able to inherit an immune system from her mother.!<