The ethics are certainly complicated, but you could conceivably build an AI that doesn't possess pain/distress or desire for freedom in a way you could not by cloning a human.
A self-driving car currently doesn't care that it's unpaid and unappreciated. It'd be cruel to make a self-driving car that gets depressed by not getting to go to the beach tomorrow.
Knowingly causing pain against the will of another is violence, so creating a being that will experience pain could be considered the same.
I’ve noticed it especially in Japanese fiction, for some added context.
Does the fact that the parents don’t, with intent and personally, inflict the pain allow them to abdicate that they are the root cause of the pain even being possible in the first place.
If you maximize pleasure as a first priority, you can either say that "As long as human life is in general good, I should make the choice to create one" or "As long as a human life produces any good, I should make the choice to create one".
This gets into an interesting sub-point with respect to animal experiments - most people would argue that animal experiments produce some good (Advances in human health). Moral critiques of animal experiments, thus, can rely on either "Hurting animals is bad" (Negative utilitarianism, more or less) or "The pain we create does not outweigh the value they produce". The later point is particularly poignant because the species experiencing the pain does not receive benefits of the pain (Thus there's no "community sacrifice").