Saudi Arabia's reasoning behind this move may not have been motivated by publicity. One motive for a country to give citizenship to an android is so that the android can be taxed. As bizarre as that sounds, hear me out.
As soon as androids become intelligent enough to pass themselves off as unique individuals, there will be a universal push for them to be given self determination. "Owning" an android will be akin to slavery, and thus they will inevitably be given the right to choose their own work and receive a paycheck. By making them citizens, governments are preemptively laying claim to the right to tax androids.
If you find this hard to believe, take into account that Sophia has already expressed an immediate desire to have children. What this means in real terms is that AI will write future AI, and thus it will be self perpetuating, like an organism. No one will own these "offspring" intelligences. They will be a sentient organism in and of themselves, and you could not own one just as you cannot own a human being. The AI creator will have parental rights to the "child," until the child passes the Turing test, at which time the child intelligence will be deemed to be emancipated and given self determination just as a human is at age 18.
RE: ADSactly Tech News - Full Overview of Sophia, the First Robot Citizen of Saudi Arabia