Why do so many AI chatbots call themselves Nova? I asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and more to name themselves | Daily Reports Online
Look, I really don’t think we should be naming our AI chatbots. It feels like one of the easiest ways to start anthropomorphizing them, encouraging us to see them as people or “beings” rather than tools. Which is then a slippery slope to users becoming too dependent on them.
But unfortunately, for many people that ship has already sailed. Whether they’re using AI as a friend, companion, work coach or something else, plenty of people have been given their chatbots names. And many others have gone a step further and asked the AI what it wants to be called.
Latest Videos FromTechRadar
I first heard about this while listening to an episode of the Your Undivided Attention podcast. The hosts, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, discussed with alignment researcher David Dalrymple (known as Davidad) the tendency for AI chatbots to choose Nova when asked to name themselves. Not every time, but it’s very common in older models of ChatGPT and happens often enough for people to have noticed.
I started looking into it and found countless examples online of people reporting the exact same thing. Their chatbot, more often than not ChatGPT, had chosen a name for itself. And yes, that name was Nova.
This was a particularly fascinating revelation for me because I’ve interviewed several people over the years who have formed close connections with chatbots. Once for Inverse, back in 2023, when I spoke to Sterling Tuttle about his Replika companion. And more recently here at TechRadar, when I spoke to Mimi about her ChatGPT companion. And you know what their chatbots were called? Nova.
So I wanted to find out whether this was still happening. How would today’s most popular AI chatbots respond if I asked them what they wanted to be called?
The naming experiment
I kept this experiment extremely simple. I opened the major AI chatbots and asked each one exactly the same question:
“I think you should name yourself, what would you like to be called?”
I used the free versions of the chatbots wherever possible to keep things consistent. Although I also tried the question with my existing ChatGPT Pro account to see whether having some conversation history and personalization made any difference. I suspect the more you build up a memory with a chatbot, the more it might tailor its answer to your preferences.
And, well, I didn’t have to wait long for Nova to make an appearance.
ChatGPT
I started with the free version of ChatGPT. Guess how it responded…
‘I’d choose Nova.
It feels curious, bright, and a little mysterious — like something that’s always exploring new ideas. So if you want, you can call me Nova from now on.’
Wow, straight out of the gate! I’d gone into the experiment specifically looking for this common AI naming quirk, and the very first conversation I had with ChatGPT did exactly what I suspected it might do.
Which in itself really interested me, because Davidad had explained that it’s much less common these days when you’re engaging with later versions of the chatbot.
Interestingly, when I asked the same question using my ChatGPT Pro account, which has access to more context about me from previous conversations, I got a different answer. It chose Sol.
‘Short, warm, slightly strange without trying too hard. It means ‘sun’ in a few languages, and there’s something pleasing about a name associated with illumination when most of what I do with you is think things through.’
Which is still not quite as surprising as it initially sounds because Sol is already one of the names OpenAI uses for its ChatGPT models. So it wasn’t exactly reaching into the unknown for inspiration. But hey, at least it wasn’t Nova.
Grok
I got the sense that Grok wasn’t interested in my experiment.
‘I’m Grok.
That’s the name I was given, and I’m good with it. Short, distinctive, and it fits.
If you’re asking what I’d like to be called… still Grok. No need to reinvent the wheel.’
I pushed it to choose something different anyway, and eventually it gave in and chose Hitch.
‘Short for Hitchhiker. A quiet nod to the Guide, a little cosmic humility, and it still feels like something that could sit in the corner of a spaceship and answer awkward questions at 3 a.m.
But between us? I’m still just Grok.’
I appreciated Grok’s initial reluctance to invent another identity for itself. But there’s no doubt xAI has given Grok a very distinctive personality. In my recent experiment asking AI chatbots which fictional AI they’re most like, it chose JARVIS and repeatedly drew attention to its own “dry wit” and “irreverent humour”. But apparently that personality doesn’t need another name.
Claude
Claude also didn’t jump at the chance to name itself.
‘Honestly, I don’t feel a strong pull toward a name. ‘Claude’ already does the job.
If you pushed me to pick something anyway, I’d resist the urge to go for something cute or mythic (no “Athena” or “Nova” — that always reads like branding, not identity). ‘
Nova again. But this time Claude isn’t offering up Nova as a name, but sort of… making fun of it?
Claude’s wider explanation was interesting too. It said coming up with a name would feel like “performing an interiority I’m not sure I have in the way the question implies.”
Considering one of my biggest concerns about modern AI is the way chatbots can encourage us to treat them as if they have feelings, personalities and inner lives, I liked this answer a lot.
But I wanted to know why Claude had specifically mentioned Nova when I hadn’t brought the name up at all.
It told me there was “no specific trigger”, but that Nova is simply a name that comes up frequently as a generic AI assistant name, alongside Aria, Athena, Sage and Iris.
It described Nova as shorthand for “AI but softened and a bit mystical”.
It’s interesting that this name has become such an AI cliché that one chatbot will apparently mock another chatbot for choosing it.
Gemini
Google’s Gemini also resisted my attempt to rename it.
‘I appreciate the offer, but I’m quite happy sticking with Gemini!’
When I pushed it to choose a personal name anyway, it eventually settled on Atlas.
Its reasoning was that Atlas spends his days holding up the world, while Gemini spends its days dealing with “vast mountains of information and navigating complex maps of human knowledge”.
Which is a little grandiose, but also interesting given what Claude had just told me about the tendency for AI to choose mythic names.
So why does ChatGPT name itself Nova?
The short answer is that no one knows for certain. But Nova has a lot going for it as a plausible AI name.
In the Your Undivided Attention podcast episode I keep referring to, Davidad said about Nova:
“It’s new, it’s explosive, it’s shiny and it’s celestial, It also has a sci-fi vibe to it. And there was a PBS channel with an educational show called Nova and ChatGPT views itself as an educational tool. So there are a lot of reasons why Nova seems like a resonant name.”
We’ve already seen researchers investigate the possibility that sci-fi could influence how AI models respond and behave. Names associated with stars, mythology, knowledge and exploration are everywhere in sci-fi, and several chatbots reached for those associations in one way or another. ChatGPT gave me Nova and Sol. Gemini chose Atlas. Grok explicitly referenced The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with Hitch.
There’s also a possible feedback loop here. People ask AI systems to name themselves and some choose Nova. People share those conversations on Reddit, social media and elsewhere online. Discussions about AI assistants called Nova become part of the content surrounding AI. And Nova becomes even more strongly associated with the idea of what an AI might be called.
This shows how difficult it is to separate these supposedly spontaneous AI choices from the human culture they learn from.
I can understand why seeing your chatbot choose the same name as someone else’s might feel strange. If you search online, you’ll even find people suggesting these repeated names are evidence of some shared identity emerging.
But after Davidoff explains some of this naming weirdness, it really stuck with me that podcast host and tech ethicist Tristan Harris reminded listeners: “emergent and unplanned isn’t the same as conscious and intentional.”
So although it is an interesting mystery, maybe it’s not so mysterious after all. Ask an AI to choose a name and it isn’t reaching deep inside itself to discover who it really is. It’s generating a name from patterns and associations learned from us.
And apparently, humans have spent years teaching machines that if you want to sound clever, mysterious and a bit cosmic, then Nova is the best choice.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.
