Emma starts with "em", the same initials as Emergent Mind :)

There's a fairly long history to it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_gendering_of_AI_technol... (consider ELIZA named after Eliza Doolittle)

And some other articles on it:

How AI bots and voice assistants reinforce gender bias - https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-ai-bots-and-voice-ass...

Gender Bias in AI: Why Voice Assistants Are Female - https://www.adaptworldwide.com/insights/2021/gender-bias-in-...

My own sample of 1 says male voices are better for heavy TTS usage.

I did it because something about the mannerisms openAI impose upon it, the excessive helpfulness, constant apologizing / concern over politeness, extreme aversion to directly conflicting anything you say, all at the same time, its a type of persona I've unintentionally learned to recognize as female. I'm not saying that as good or bad thing or making any claim as to how it should be nor making any sort of endorsement or indictment of social structure / gender roles. Its just how I and many others observe it to be.

Its not like we're doing it with any sort of disrespect. On the contrary we're all very proud of Tina and her myriad of recent accomplishments. I can see how it might come off as sexist if Tina was just our personal assistant like Alexa/Cortana. But shes not. She's less than a year old and shes already passed the bar and is going to be a lawyer. Some people think she's going to rule the world some day.