: Most artificial intelligence constructs develop an avatar that they find most
: compelling for themselves both to set them apart from the basic lines of
: code they were written as, and to perhaps interface with human life more
: effectively. Gender is one of the many ways that one can achieve this, and
: that's true for not only these constructs, but biological life as well.
: You yourself has to specify a feminine pronoun to refer to Cortana. If one
: were to truly believe that artificial life is incapable of
: self-development beyond their original programming, you would have not
: made such a distinction.

There's a difference between using gendered pronouns for rhetorical convenience, and things actually having a sex. I can refer to my car as "she" but that doesn't mean it's legally a person. Similarly, if Frankie wants to dupe people and keep things under wraps, saying the character isn't -technically- a girl is a great and easy technicality to exploit. No one's going to remember his post in 1.5 years anyway.