I've always been annoyed at that too. Considering the role that "empathy" takes in the design of the Voight-Kampff, the story is pushing empathy as being a defining human trait and of course Mercerism is all about using the Empathy Box.

I'm not rah rah AI but this type of thing is what interests me about AI video generation. Adding a scene like this for answering a personal "what if?" is really cool.