: Had Frankie stated or implied that Cortana wasn't "technically a
: girl", that would not only a slap in the face to quite a lot of
: people, including myself, but would denounce the abilities of artificial
: intelligence constructs and insist that they are mere creations of our
: will without the capacity for self-determination.

I agree with you on everything else, but she's artificial, and incorporeal, and fictional-- if she was none of those I'd go with what you said; if she was one of those I'd almost definitely agree; if she was two of those, I might go with it, or I might not, but all three... it compounds what Schooly D is actually referring to, which is *their* definition of the word "girl" (or "woman" if that was also used). I'm wondering now, would you call Cortana a girl, a woman, or what? I mean she's female, and she's 8 years old (as of Halo 4), but she's smarter than most/all humans and very mature (although her end stages got pretty immature), and she's not human, so maybe human standards shouldn't apply? Well hmm, I just thought of this, if we're not applying human standards, maybe "girl" and "woman" and female aren't right at all...?