I'll have to echo gopher and War Sparrow:
After #3079 I had to go back and see whether I missed a strip, because that reaction just seemed exaggerated. My interpretation of his comment in the previous strip is that it's a nonspecific joke, not "Faye I'll make you relapse into drinking". From this we've gone to Pintsize being threatened with "the equivalent of a grand mal seizure" (which is really bad, mmkay) and finally being stuffed full of birdseed.
Sure, Pintsize has been a (both figurative and literal) punching bag since early on, but then he was actually really misbehaving - honking boobs, destroying property, the like. Also in the meanwhile, the topic of AI rights has been developed more inside the strip (conversations with Momo, May's job search, Bubbles' past...), and when Faye switched off Pintsize the last time she went back and apologized. Since AI rights haven't been discussed a lot in connection to Pintsize (other than the time Clinton came to do a survey), it may be easy to forget them. Also Pintsize or Winslow look less like humans, so in a way I also understand why more readers have a different view.
We don't yet know whether this is the start of an arc or some one-off strips, but I love the QC where storylines are connected, things develop and the panels aren't a sandbox for playing with static characters. Having these strips stand in the middle of it all doesn't feel natural, and I'll be disappointed if this is the direction Jeph choses to develop the strip. (Though there's no doubt I will keep reading!)