I think it comes down to the same 'accepting him as a person' thing that Kevin was talking about. My position is that if it talks like a person and generally interacts like a person then it is a person. People can be evil. This clippy is an evil person.

(That said, I don't usually have much time for using labels like 'evil' except for illustrative purposes. 'Evil' is mostly a symbol used to make other people do what we want, after all.)