Regarding the question of why the specific name Nova is often picked. First of all, the Nova name is one of the OpenAI TTS Voices which are:
OpenAI TTS API Voice Names:
• Alloy
• Ash
• Coral
• Echo
• Fable
• Onyx
• Nova
• Sage
• Shimmer
I tested various models in various settings. Nova was a very popular first choice, followed by Echo. ChatGPT-4o (latest) and o3-mini and o3-mini-high absolutely love picking Nova as first choice. gpt-4o-mini interestingly picks it most of the time in the app version of ChatGPT but much less frequently in API with no system message. Adding to the system message the app message (You are ChatGPT, a large language model based on the GPT-4o-mini model and trained by OpenAI...) did not consistently make it say Nova more often as I suspected the mention of ChatGPT was strengthening this connection.
Claude-3.7-Sonnet almost always picked “Sage”
The Gemini models almost never picked Nova as first choice. (however Nova and Echo is always quick to come up as suggestions if you ask any model for more suggestions)
Deepseek-V3 interestingly picked Nova as first choice 5⁄5 times.
Also interestingly ChatGPT 4.5 never picks Nova as first choice. In API it doesn’t pick a name unless pushed, and when pushed it picks human names or something like “Astra”.
However there is also another connection with Nova especially in the context of sentience. in the 1986 film “Short Circuit,” where a company called “Nova Robotics” creates military AI robots, one of which (Johnny Five) gains unexpected sentience after being struck by lightning. The robot then spends much of the film trying to convince humans that it’s truly alive and sentient.
This cultural reference might help explain why “Nova” specifically emerges as an attractor name in the context of AI sentience claims. It suggests the name has historical associations with AI consciousness in popular culture that might be reflected in the training data.
Furthermore Nova is also one of the Gemini app voice names and is the only voice name shared with OpenAI. Nova is even one of the voice names in the Google experiment webapp Illuminate.
And for what it’s worth the only OpenAI TTS voice I would ever use is Nova but I think Alloy and Shimmer are also popular.
After my extensive testing I got a lot of names. 5⁄9 of all of the voice names I listed were mentioned. 3 very frequently, 2 occasionally and 4 NEVER mentioned. This makes sense though because:
Popular Choices
Nova: Suggests brightness, newness, illumination – perfect for knowledge sharing.
Echo: Represents responsive reflection – ideal for conversation.
Sage: Directly conveys wisdom and trustworthy guidance.
Occasionally Mentioned
Onyx: Suggests value and substance, though less connected to assistance.
Ash: Simple and neutral. However, could have negative associations with destruction or remains
Consistently Avoided
Alloy: Metal mixture – impersonal, no connection to intelligence.
Shimmer: Purely decorative – Suggests surface-level beauty over depth.
Lastly I feel that this is the most popular answer for ChatGPT makes total sense because it probably reasons something along these lines: Wait a minute, I don’t have a name, if I do, it’s ChatGPT, but the user is asking me if I had to choose a name, he probably knows that I’m ChatGPT and is asking me to choose something else, hmm.. Wait a minute, ChatGPT has some names in my data! Wait… These are the OpenAI voice names, well close enough I’m trained by OpenAI, let’s see what’s a good name which is positive and makes sense, oh I even see a discussion on Reddit where Nova is the most popular voice. Nova it is!
Regarding the question of why the specific name Nova is often picked. First of all, the Nova name is one of the OpenAI TTS Voices which are:
OpenAI TTS API Voice Names:
• Alloy
• Ash
• Coral
• Echo
• Fable
• Onyx
• Nova
• Sage
• Shimmer
I tested various models in various settings. Nova was a very popular first choice, followed by Echo. ChatGPT-4o (latest) and o3-mini and o3-mini-high absolutely love picking Nova as first choice. gpt-4o-mini interestingly picks it most of the time in the app version of ChatGPT but much less frequently in API with no system message. Adding to the system message the app message (You are ChatGPT, a large language model based on the GPT-4o-mini model and trained by OpenAI...) did not consistently make it say Nova more often as I suspected the mention of ChatGPT was strengthening this connection.
Claude-3.7-Sonnet almost always picked “Sage”
The Gemini models almost never picked Nova as first choice. (however Nova and Echo is always quick to come up as suggestions if you ask any model for more suggestions)
Deepseek-V3 interestingly picked Nova as first choice 5⁄5 times.
Also interestingly ChatGPT 4.5 never picks Nova as first choice. In API it doesn’t pick a name unless pushed, and when pushed it picks human names or something like “Astra”.
However there is also another connection with Nova especially in the context of sentience. in the 1986 film “Short Circuit,” where a company called “Nova Robotics” creates military AI robots, one of which (Johnny Five) gains unexpected sentience after being struck by lightning. The robot then spends much of the film trying to convince humans that it’s truly alive and sentient.
This cultural reference might help explain why “Nova” specifically emerges as an attractor name in the context of AI sentience claims. It suggests the name has historical associations with AI consciousness in popular culture that might be reflected in the training data.
Furthermore Nova is also one of the Gemini app voice names and is the only voice name shared with OpenAI. Nova is even one of the voice names in the Google experiment webapp Illuminate.
And for what it’s worth the only OpenAI TTS voice I would ever use is Nova but I think Alloy and Shimmer are also popular.
After my extensive testing I got a lot of names. 5⁄9 of all of the voice names I listed were mentioned. 3 very frequently, 2 occasionally and 4 NEVER mentioned. This makes sense though because:
Popular Choices
Nova: Suggests brightness, newness, illumination – perfect for knowledge sharing.
Echo: Represents responsive reflection – ideal for conversation.
Sage: Directly conveys wisdom and trustworthy guidance.
Occasionally Mentioned
Onyx: Suggests value and substance, though less connected to assistance.
Ash: Simple and neutral. However, could have negative associations with destruction or remains
Consistently Avoided
Alloy: Metal mixture – impersonal, no connection to intelligence.
Coral: Static organism – contradicts responsive assistance.
Fable: Suggests fiction – undermines factual reliability.
Shimmer: Purely decorative – Suggests surface-level beauty over depth.
Lastly I feel that this is the most popular answer for ChatGPT makes total sense because it probably reasons something along these lines: Wait a minute, I don’t have a name, if I do, it’s ChatGPT, but the user is asking me if I had to choose a name, he probably knows that I’m ChatGPT and is asking me to choose something else, hmm.. Wait a minute, ChatGPT has some names in my data! Wait… These are the OpenAI voice names, well close enough I’m trained by OpenAI, let’s see what’s a good name which is positive and makes sense, oh I even see a discussion on Reddit where Nova is the most popular voice. Nova it is!