If LLMs are "just" statistical models, humans are "just" a bunch of neurons squirting chemicals back and forth. There's no pixie dust in our brains that makes us special.
LLMs are not conscious: They have no analogues for feelings or senses and no construct of selfhood. But if a statistical model had those things—if it did all the mundane, physical bookkeeping our brains do to produce "real" emotions and motivations—then there's no reason it couldn't be as conscious as we are.
There's some great research areas opened up by "AI". But it's research into people, not "AI". We should be looking into how human vision works, given that we take obviously generated images to be real. And how we grant intention to text which clearly has no intention.