Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Gender identity/Archive 3

RfC: Pronouns for chatbots, AI, etc.
So, on the page Neuro-sama I removed the gendered she/her pronouns and replaced them with it/its on the basis that Neuro-sama is an AI, and thus an inanimate object. User:Meteoric91 added the pronouns back because, quote, "Neuro-sama was specifically designed to have gender-identifying properties, as stated by the creator Vedal himself and evidenced by Neuro-sama's art style, voice, and live mannerisms." I wanted to bring this to this page so that we could perhaps come to a decision as a community how it should be handled, and also perhaps update the MoS page itself to reflect whatever we decide. While this discussion is primarily related to the page Neuro-sama, it would also effect other AIs with "gender-identifying properties" such as Tay (chatbot) and Zo (bot), and possibly more that I am unaware of. Di (they-them) (talk) 03:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * We routinely use gendered pronouns for entirely fictional characters, in printed-text fiction, graphic/animated stories, etc. That these particular fictional characters are "animated" by AI does not seem to me to require changing that usage. –  . Raven  .talk 04:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a key difference. The article isn't about a fictional character, but rather the chatbot itself Di (they-them) (talk) 04:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The "persona" of the chatbot is the "fictional character" I mean. Rather as the Muppets' Kermit and Miss Piggy are he and she respectively, or as Dustin Hoffman's male character's "Mrs. Doubfire" persona is a "she" — like drag queens' personas — while the opposite for Tilda Swinton's male roles. –  . Raven  .talk 04:37, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting topic to discuss. Particularly when you also bring in the topic of vocaloids, which are very clearly meant to be gendered in various ways. And many of these chatbots are meant to be the same. I would probably fall on the line of using "it" if it is just a program with no meaningful signifiers to relate to be anthropomorphic. For those that are meant to be anthropomorphized as characters (even without a visual avatar), I would default to using third person pronouns such as "they". And then for purposefully gendered programs where the gender is explicitly stated by the creators or the general community involved, I'd support using those gendered pronouns preferably over anything else.


 * Hopefully that sort of nuanced take makes sense. Silver  seren C 04:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It's clearer and more specific than my own comment a minute earlier, which did not cover when "it" or "they" might be more appropriate than gendered pronouns. Thank you, and I cede my position in favor of yours. –  . Raven  .talk 04:32, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This is also my take. Allow me to expand a little. ChatGPT, for example, by default, is not designed with any specific attributes that would lead a user to believe that their interactions with the AI are synonymous of those with a gendered individual. Popular virtual assistants, such as Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, though presented with a feminine voice by default, are not designed to portray a gendered character. In these cases, the concept of gender is not a core, identifying feature of the product.
 * In contrast, Neuro-sama IS designed to embody a large set of gendered characteristics, evidenced by the feminine artistic illustration and aesthetics of the avatar, the feminine voice, and the feminine mannerisms. Thus, the manifestation of the AI system, in this case, is a female virtual character who engages with viewers in real time by responding to their messages or initiating a discussion on a particular topic (on top of singing and playing video games). In addition, the creator, the avatar's illustrator, the avatar's Live2D rigger, the community Neuro-sama is primarily associated with (i.e. the VTuber community), as well as Neuro-sama herself (self-identification) all utilize "she/her" pronouns when referencing said AI manifestation.
 * I appreciate the mention of vocaloids, such as Hatsune Miku, that are likely to contain qualities reflective of gender (Miku's Wikipedia page uses "she/her" pronouns). Even inanimate objects, such as ships, can be referenced with "she/her/hers" (predominantly) or "he/him/his" (minorly). In conclusion, while referring to such gender-portraying chatbots/AI as "it/its" or "they/their" would technically not be incorrect, the usage of such pronouns would diminish a key identifying feature that these chatbots/AI were explicitly designed to possess. Meteoric91 (talk) 08:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I like this answer. I am extremely wary of degendering projects intended to have gender, whatever form they take, and if the project uses gendered pronouns to describe their creation, I would support using those pronouns.
 * As another argument: I would expect to see gendered pronouns used to describe an NPC in a video-game, which are also systems that respond to users. It does not seem to me that this should depend on the level of fictionality of the game, but rather the extent to which the entity is a character with gender. For example, the current revision of Dragon Age: Origins uses "her" to refer to the Flemeth character that the in-game player character interacts with, as I would expect. The current revision of the Duolingo article uses "himself" to refer to the owl, who is a fictional character that the real-world user of Duolingo interacts with. I don't see any good reason why either of those should be changed, and so this seems to extend neatly to chatbots like Tay. Kalany (talk) 02:38, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * And of course "NPC" (non-player character) goes back to RPGs (role-playing games) like Dungeons & Dragons, in which the characters are quite routinely gendered — unless mechanisms or otherwise inherently non-gendered — and the gender of a player's character might differ from that of the player. –  . Raven  .talk 07:36, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * So there are two sides to this. As discussed above,, human pronouns are better. However, there is also the aspect of discussing the AI in the context of being an AI. The phrases "she is an artificial neural network" or "he was used by 176,000 people in 2018" are very confusing. Then again, so would switching pronouns mid-article. Hm... Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 04:38, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * One would have to be clear when one was referring to the persona or the software — as when referring to a Muppet *character* vs. the physical puppet made of cloth, thread, stuffing, etc. –  . Raven  .talk 04:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I would suggest that this edge case is best handled with using the name ("ChatBob is a neural network") or re-writing ("The search feature was used by 50 billion people in April"). Kalany (talk) 02:22, 23 June 2023 (UTC)


 * — Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender, not the gender that someone else (including creator, parent or obstetrician) assigns. Are we saying that Neuro-sama is sentient? Because that's the only reasonable way we say that Neuro-sama has a gender. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * As discussed above, by that logic we would use object pronouns for fictional characters. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 04:55, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Then are Kermit, Miss Piggy, Mrs. Doubtfire, and (to pick just one) Tilda Swinton's 2018-Suspiria character Dr. Jozef Klemperer, all ungendered? Because people other than those characters assigned their genders. –  . Raven  .talk 04:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Is a chatbot a fictional character in a fictional universe?
 * A fictional character is created by someone who assigned the gender, but we suspend disbelief and pretend that the character is a real self-aware person - not the construct of an author/writer - who can thus express an independent identity, within the constraints of the fictional universe.
 * But I suggest that Neuro-sama is a fictional character in a fictional universe. Neuro-sama is a  piece of software, running on a real computer, in the "real" (as distinct from fictional) world.
 * One solution would be to separate the (real) software (chatbot: "a software application that aims to mimic human conversation") from the (fictional) character: "Neuro-sama is the character portrayed by a chatbot ... She ...". Mitch Ames (talk) 05:31, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, as suggested above at 04:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC). –  . Raven  .talk 07:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Has there been a large enough body of articles or discussions to warrant a site-wide guidance? Any prescription one way or the other at this point seems WP:CREEP. Follow reliable sources and sort out any disagreement on article talk pages, as with pretty much anything else. Nardog (talk) 05:11, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nardog.
 * This has to be the answer.
 * "Has there been a large enough body of articles or discussions to warrant a site-wide guidance? Any prescription one way or the other at this point seems WP:CREEP. Follow reliable sources and sort out any disagreement on article talk pages, as with pretty much anything else. " Lukewarmbeer (talk) 07:44, 12 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I do not feel that changing the gendered pronouns in this article was the right editorial decision. I grant that sex is a biological characteristic, and we're not talking about a biological entity, and therefore the character doesn't have a sex; but there's a lot more to it than this.  Firstly, Neuro-sama is a fictional character and fictional characters use gender pronouns even though they don't have any physical existence, let alone a sex.  Secondly, grammatical gender isn't psychosocial gender.  English-speaking people with dysphoria often, and understandably, care a lot about the pronouns we use for them and we're always right to respect their choices -- but this character is not a person with dysphoria.  She's a gendered construct.  We should apply the rules of language, not the rules of biology, and linguistically she would take the feminine pronouns -- although I think you might need to speak another Indo-European language that isn't English to feel the force of this second argument properly?  Anyway, I would suggest changing it back.—S Marshall T/C 08:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)


 * In Pride Month, when nonbinary people's pronouns are being debated and defaulted to gendered forms on a handful of talk pages, we're worrying about the gender identity of chatbots 🤯
 * Given that we are, I agree with @Silver seren, who has made a nuanced point pretty eloquently. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 11:21, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The language in the article should reflect the language used in the coverage of the topic. On Neuro-sama in particular, the vast majority (if not all) of her coverage uses gendered pronouns (e.g. VTuber Neuro-sama terrifies viewers with her gruesome game concept, "As her name implies, Neuro-sama is essentially a neural network with a VTuber-style face.", "She acts like a regular streamer who plays games and interacts with the chat but she's AI.") I think deviating from the general consensus on the language used on the topic would violate WP:OR, so at least in this case, Neuro-sama should use feminine pronouns. Other AIs should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 12:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This is what I was going to say as well. How we refer to any aspect of any topic is based on how it is referred to in reliable sources. Anything else brings us into OR territory. Thebiguglyalien  ( talk ) 16:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It suddenly occurred to me that there's old precedent for this situation: HAL 9000, in Clarke's and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey – the two astronauts "agree to disconnect HAL if he is proven wrong". –  . Raven  .talk 16:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Use it . Yes, even if that means cleaning up old material about HAL 9000. AI and robots do not have actual gender, whatever the intentions of their designers, and using she or he is romanticizing nonsense, and unencyclopedic, emotive writing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:51, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * By that argument, why shouldn't we use "it" for all fictional characters? Silver  seren C 03:12, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * > "cleaning up old material about HAL 9000" – We could change "he"→"it" in the 2001 and HAL 9000 articles, but since the novel and film (and many publications/websites) would continue to use "he", we'd be departing from the sources in order to impose our own opinion, something of a no-no here. –  . Raven  .talk 06:09, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This is interesting because we're remarkably inconsistent about this in our articles about AIs -- whether real or fictional. In Amazon Alexa, Siri, and Cortana (virtual assistant), which are articles about software, all the virtual assistants are "it".  In The Terminator, the Terminator is "it", but in Terminator (character) the Terminator is "he".  C-3P0, K-2S0 and R2-D2 are all "he".  K9 (Doctor Who) is "he", but in Dalek (Doctor Who episode) the Dalek (admittedly not strictly an AI in the fictional uinverse) is "it".  I suspect that in the articles about fictional AIs, sympathetic/protagonist AIs tend to take gendered pronouns and antagonistic AIs take inanimate ones.I want to stress that an entity's grammatical gender doesn't need to reflect its reproductive plumbing or lack thereof.  That's an uncontroversial thing to say in most Indo-European languages.  I know it's surprising in English, and controversial and political in American.  But deciding a creature's pronouns based on its plumbing is potentially oppressive.—S Marshall T/C 10:04, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Exactly this. Frankly, this kind of reductive hostility around gender is unhelpful, @SMcCandlish.  OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 10:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * In point of fact, I find S Marshall's argument fairly persuasive. I've said nothing hostile. The fact that you and a few others habitually dive immediately into a WP:BATTLEGROUND stance any time you run into something of a "doctrinal" difference in position is why this topic on WP is so awful and why people keep getting topic-banned from it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:03, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Re Terminators: see also Terminator (character concept)) [consistently "it"] and T-X [played in the third film by Kristanna Loken; mostly "it", but one time "her"].Re Daleks: we know that the creatures inside the machines are alive (derived from human or humanoid cells), but don't know their genders nor even whether they have genders, as we also don't know how they reproduce. It may be asexually, like amoebae, by division, or by cloning. Their intense emphasis on genetic purity (Daleks kill other Daleks "for perceived genetic impurity") may not tolerate even the sort of genetic diversity that sexual reproduction involves, e.g. some having XX chromosomes and some XY. We aren't told such details, and can't speculate in articles.Re "in most Indo-European languages": you may be interested in Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender. –  . Raven  .talk 15:27, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I know it's surprising in English, and controversial and political in American. – Implying that transgender people aren't as oppressed outside of America and the Anglosphere comes off as, at best, insensitive. Thebiguglyalien  ( talk ) 17:31, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I said absolutely nothing to imply or suggest that in any way at all, and my remarks could only be understood that way if taken completely out of context.—S Marshall T/C 14:44, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Are we particularly inconsistent? We surely are to some extent, but I think it's obvious to call Siri and other voice assistants "it"; several of them started out with only one female voice, but now they offer a choice of female/male/androgynous voices. Don't know about the others, but for Siri, there's no "default" voice (it asks upon setup, and if the user doesn't choose, it picks randomly rather than always picking the female voice), so "it" is the natural pronoun. DFlhb (talk) 11:48, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I see no inconsistency. Terminators and other entirely-fictional AIs only exist in a fictional context, so a reader will understand that when we use human pronouns for them we are saying only that they are treated as people within that fictional context. Alexa, though, exists in the real world; to use human pronouns for it in the article voice is to imply that it genuinely, in some sense, qualifies as a person in the real world, ie. that usage would imply an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim about the underlying technology, which requires high-quality secondary sourcing to support. I would suggest a guidance that AIs from works of fiction should use whatever pronouns are used for them in that fiction; but that real-world ones should default to "it" unless overwhelming high-quality WP:INDEPENDENT WP:SECONDARY coverage supports a more human pronoun; this, to me, reflects both our sourcing policy and our current practice. --Aquillion (talk) 07:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The simplest solution to me seems to be to use whatever pronouns the subject's developers use when referring to their creation. If the developers use she/her, use she/her. If it's he/him, then use he/him. If they/them, then use they/them. With some exceptions, chatbots and conversational AIs seem fit into a middle ground between pure software packages and fictional characters. Where the bot is gendered by its creator, it makes sense to refer to it by whatever gendered terms and pronouns are contextually appropriate. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:47, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * No primary/secondary source distinction here? –  . Raven  .talk 00:19, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Good question. Were it not for the crossover between chatbots being pure software and fictional characters, I would say defer primarily to secondary sources. But because there often is a crossover, and particularly where the bot's creator is intention is for the bot to be semiotically gender coded I think deferring to authorial intent is the better approach here. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * No primary/secondary source distinction. Our articles have to mean what the reliable sources mean, but they don't have to use the words the reliable sources use.  We have to write articles in WP:OUROWNWORDS.—S Marshall T/C 14:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I would argue we should rely solely on secondary sources for this, and completely disregard primary or non-WP:INDEPENDENT ones. Primary sources (ie. companies rolling out chatbots) have extremely strong incentives to humanize them in the eyes of the public, since it makes them seem more impressive than they may actually be. This makes primary sources bad ones the question of whether we should use that framing in our own article voice, in the same way that we wouldn't use a primary source for any other wording that might imply that a piece of tech is extraordinary or groundbreaking. We could quote or attribute eg. Amazon's statements that "Alexa is basically human!" or whatever, but to use Amazon as a primary source to guide our article-voice treatment in that direction seems inappropriate. --Aquillion (talk) 06:57, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed. DFlhb (talk) 11:50, 22 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I would use "human" pronouns for AIs only if the majority of high-quality secondary sources do. I wouldn't rely on primary or non-WP:INDEPENDENT sources for that - this isn't a gender issue, it's a "do we portray the AI as if it were a person?" issue. And primary sources are going to have a strong incentive to humanize their AIs, since that makes them seem more impressive; we shouldn't accept that framing unless secondary sources do. I also think that this is different from fictional characters in that, when we use human pronouns for a fictional character, we're clearly doing so in a "fictional context", which most readers will understand; whereas when we refer to an AI as "he" or "she", we're risking an implicit statement of "this AI is, in some sense, an actual person" and are encouraging the reader to think of them way. That's perhaps a complicated philosophical or social question, which is why we should leave it up to secondary sources; and I would argue that the implication of "this AI is, in fact, a person" is currently an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, hence we should require an actual majority among high-quality stories and not eg. a single "wow-isn't-this-cool" puff piece. Obviously if "strong" AI ever does become a thing, this would change completely, but that's not the case at the moment. --Aquillion (talk) 06:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I know I'm a week after much of this conversation but the tag is still there. I don't think there is a lot of risk to deferring to independent sources to override a default of "it". I agree that we should not rely on primary sources. I think the level of reliability of those sources is up for debate. Eg. if virtually all the UGC uses one pronoun, but the most reliable media has not picked it up, I think there's a "common parlance" argument to be made to allow use of either/both pronounces as is appropriate. More generally, I think we should also avoid guidelines to enforce consistency if what we consider reliable sources use differing/multiple pronouns, and allow editors to let the article settle on its own towards one or multiple, whatever appropriate. &mdash;siro&chi;o 20:59, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * There seems to be a few different things being discussed above, ranging from chatbots whose developers are incentivized to try to humanize them with human pronouns all the way to fictional characters like C3PO or Bender from Futurama. In the case of fictional characters, at least, I would be against degendering the characters' pronouns. These characters are ultimately fictional persons - strong AI - even if not human per se; we should defer to how sources refer to them, which is usually as he or she. As for chatbots and such, I don't have an opinion on that right now. Crossroads -talk- 23:05, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

This Style Guide is Transphobic.
This style guide is mandating misgendering, and does no justice nor gives any respect to people who's pronouns happen to be neopronouns. If a person's pronouns are ze/zir, then zir Wikipedia article should continuously reflect that, and should not misgender them by using the singular they. 67.241.70.141 (talk) 03:18, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * What gender does ze/zir denote? What gender does the singular they denote? What is the difference? Mitch Ames (talk) 03:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It depends? I don't have sources; I doubt there... Are many. Forgive me for talking about what is 100% original research.
 * My neopronouns (ve/ver/verself) sort of reflect the fact that my understanding of my gender is as a sort of floating signifier; I have a gender, absolutely, and it is not male nor female nor in between and it is signified only by itself, and I suppose by me. This is in contrast to they/them, which doesn't actually resonate as truly neutral to me; it feels like it doesn't reflect 'ambiguity', but rather a gender that is signified by a particular sort of ambiguity; and that gender feels as alien to me as maleness or femaleness.
 * I've heard other trans people who dislike they/them, or prefer other pronouns over they/them say similar things, fwiw. 136.35.180.148 (talk) 17:09, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this is just blatant bigotry. Wikipedia is mandating that neopronoun users be misgendered, and this is just completely unacceptable for anyone who has morals. How is Wikipedia supposed to be a source of trusted information if users are required to misgender trans people? I exclusively use neopronouns. My pronouns are not they/them. Misgendering me and other trans people who use neopronouns is not "professional", it's just blatant bigotry, and is just going to make it harder for trans people to gain acceptance in our society if Wikipedia is going to forcibly hold people back from learning the most basic form of respect for us! Using our pronouns! 73.21.37.82 (talk) 02:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for saying this!!! I'm lucky in that I'm okay with they/them pronouns as well as my neopronouns, but that is not the case for everyone.
 * For example: author Maia Kobabe, who exclusively uses e/em/eir pronouns.
 * It's unacceptable that e is repeatedly misgendered on the wiki page for eir book, Gender Queer, despite that book literally being about eir gender journey. How is it professional to completely ignore the background of an autobiography?
 * When was this arbitrary decision about what is and isn't proper even made? (SEE EDIT)
 * It's not like we can't just put a footnote after the pronoun to clarify. It's used on pages for people who use they/them pronouns (e.g. Lil Uzi Vert) so I don't see why we couldn't do the same for neopronouns.


 * EDIT: Alright, there was a discussion had about this some time ago, but the conclusion supposedly reached does not align with what I've seen neopronoun users say.


 * If one were refer to someone who only uses she/her pronouns with they/them pronouns, that would still be misgendering. Same with someone who exclusively uses he/him pronouns. I don't see why neopronouns are an exception. Sure, it's not conventional, but being nonbinary isn't either. What's so hard to respect?
 * Rainbowlack (talk) 11:41, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The whole point of they / them is that those words are - the words "avoid reference towards a particular sex or gender". You cannot misgender someone by using a term that has no gender. Referring to someone as "they" instead of he/she/e is no more misgendering than referring to them as a person instead of a male/female/..., or referring to someone as a "police officer" instead of a policeman or policewoman, or referring to me (a cisgender male) as "that Wikipedia editor" instead of "him". They/them might not be a person's preferred pronouns but those words are not misgendering anyone. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)


 * This dispute hinges on the meaning of the word 'transphobic'. Is the idea that the use of the singular they is "transphobic" a logical idea? Well, the singular they was invented so that subject's gender is not identified. So is it transphobic to not identify the subject's gender at all because they do not prefer he/him or she/her pronouns? That depends on the meaning of the word "transphobic". If it is transphobic, then a further question is: what is the weight of that transphobia? Does it outweigh the need for consistency and readability? JM (talk) 14:49, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The section is, but the OP's statement is that . "Transphobic" and "misgendering" are not the same thing. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:43, 29 January 2024 (UTC)