evidence for joi being a real person

-in the scene where she's in the rain, in contrast to the scene previous where she's reenacting preprogrammed behaviours, she seems to be creating new animations for being in the rain in real time. shes not really interacting with the environment in a physical way, but she is adapting new behaviours to react to new stimulus, adopting new behaviours that are not intended by the company, and imo she does this not to impress k but because she has her own wants, like wanting to feel wet, to be real, and tries to fulfill those as best she can

-mariette (the mackenzie davis sex worker character) interacts with joi as though she's competition - the joi ai competes for space with real sex workers, and mariette speaks to joi as though she believes that the ai is simple and hollow inside, unlike mariette herself - but she says this to joi as though she's trying to hurt her feelings, not just anthropomorphising an object, unlike the way you'd argue with an appliance - she's trying to affect a change in joi's opinion, the way you might with a person, contradicting what she's saying to her

-when k's car is crashed in the wasteland joi screams at him to get up and protect himself event though he's unconscious and can't see or hear her

-k has told joi about his implanted memory over and over again, to the most intimate detail, which is contrasted with his telling his superior officer, who has to prompt him and order him to tell her this, and he still retains pertinent details. joi enables k to express a truer and more intimate self.

-initially, joi's conversation with k speaks about k's work euphemistically, in the initial scene where she cosplays as a housewife - but increasingly over the course of the film joi takes a specific interest in the case in a way that isn't a programmed behaviour you'd expect from a companion ai, analysing the changing situation and making inferences about new clues as they show up. she takes an interest in the outcome, and she takes an active role in the investigation. she's not programmed to do that.

-we see joi making her own choices - she chooses to believe that k is a man and not a replicant, against k's stated preference - and this shouldn't be a pre-programmed behavior by the wallace corporation. why would they wish to convince replicants that they were human?

-she chooses to have the backup of her memory erased. she does this to protect k, and this is perhaps a reasonable software behavior - like a phone that erases its data when stolen - but she also explicitly chooses here that, should the portable version of her memory be destroyed, that she would really be gone, 'like a real girl' - this is joi choosing metaphorically and literally to become mortal. and while she asks k to do this for her, it's clearly her choice not his.

-the clearest evidence that joi is merely a product of the wallace corporation and not a real person is luv's account (silvia hoeks' agent character) - the way that luv speaks of joi. but in luv's confrontation with the madam (robin wright's police lieutenant) she makes it clear that she takes a special pleasure in lying, and in execution - and as a product of wallace herself, programmed not to lie, willing to lie to wallace, we can see that there's some wiggle room here between what wallace believe its products are capable of vs what they might actually be doing

-as well as this, wallace's assertion that its products aren't people is suspect in the clearer case where it claims replicants aren't people when they clearly are people. so if they're wrong about that, they might reasonably be wrong about this also

-in the scene where k is confronted with the advertising hologram of joi, when she's gone, this new joi undermines the case that joi was ever really a person, or that k's version of joi is unique at all. the advertising joi calls him 'joe', just like the real joi did. so was she ever really real? I think the movie has to make both cases for us. the mystery of 'is joi a person or not' wants to be an enduring mystery, something to argue about. i'm arguing about it here. but i think this scene really makes the case that joi cannot be replaced. k cannot simply start again with a new joi. she's gone and he's right to mourn her. the advertising hologram doesnt get wet in the rain. it wouldn't be the same joi.

-similarly (if we allow this sort of comparison) the movie makes the case in the immediately previous scene, when wallace offers deckard a new, recreated version of rachael, and deckard rejects her, that this would not be the same person and such a thing can't happen. the movie has a take on this.

in general, in every scene she's in, she asserts with all of her being that she's real, her drive as a character is to be or to become real, to have a real relationship with k-joe, to love and be loved for real. she cares, she loves, she exists. the movie wants you to love her, to mourn her, to think of her as a tragic martyr for a the cause of human liberation from the slavery of the world it presents. it wants you to believe she's real, and not just so it can pull the rug and reveal that she's not, actually. joi's a real lady. it is the thing about her.