Yes we could. Hey I'm out of date (since last week, at least). A fellah called Ilya broke off from his development of early ChatGPT AI because too many things bothered him. He pops up on youtubes.
It's easy to get caught up in words like sentience. One might have to define it in terms the thing a human has, because nothing else does... But a comprehensive AI machine is like us, just a load of connections. We have extra comms modes other than electrical, like hormonal, and the robot would never "feel" the same as we do, but differently. We're the same really. Ask your AI if it thinks it's possible that the AI machine will invent a god, like humans have (many). It will say yes.