Gems are similar to AI. But based in Stones that have their core Data in them, like an AI on a hard drive.
But, @Darkmon the Soul May have originated from a religion, but it's not exclusive to it, nor is looking at it from the perspective of religion solely a good idea. Though, it wouldn't really be much different if we're looking at Japanese Myths for example. You said, in Japanese Myths, the chairs' Souls and traits are impressions of those around it?
A. that's a fire concept, and if you can show me where you got that from, then that's good info to know for writing.
B. That doesn't change the fact that anything CAN have a Soul.
As for what constitutes a living thing... Anything can be considered alive. It's a definition with arbitrary exceptions. Humans and sufficiently advanced machines are no different. We are both ruled by programming, so if a robot shouldn't have a Soul, neither should we. That's, of course, if you want to get into semantics.
But, usually anything that can be considered a whole thing would have a Soul. The definition for life that excludes viruses could obviously just include viruses as one of the many exceptions to the rules that we have for scientific definitions. Some Aliens, like, I guess, the Alien from Alien, may be made of Silicon or something— or Diamonds, like from Ben Ten.
I like the definition DMUA the best for Vs debates, though, to keep that clear.
As for beyond that... All things can be considered alive technically, if we ignore the Cell requirements. Movement is common in every atom of everything, which would mean that every particle has a Soul, and possibly in addition, a United being has its own soul. But, the problem then becomes "to what extent is a being considered a United thing?" You can take apart a machine and repurpose its parts, or make it so only its parts at the core of it are around.
If you put your brain in a robot body, does your Soul go with it.
This is how you know Souls don't exist IRL, or at least are irrelevant to anything on our level of intelligence— because there's no viable definition.