Immanent wall of text, Dont wanna get spoiled? shoo, look away and dont hover over this black wall of text.
Ai's CG used during her MOD3 story, which goes into detail about how she was a former test dummy or rather assistant pilot for a mecha Assault Artillery program in development by a 3rd party company (the story doesn't specify if it was GnK). Her pre-mod story starts off with her... crashing and rebooting in the Raifu's Cafe, which she comes back online thinking she was still working at a chinese cafe and started referring Kalina by her partners name (which was unknown throughout her whole MOD3 story), So Imoko's daughter and Kalina took her to the maintenance room to clear up her digimind only for Kalina to find that her digimind is under-performing due to an excess amount of encrypted data.
During her time as a doll pilot, her name was 59898 and her task was to assist a chinese mecha pilot who was tasked with operating a new type of mech to combat some "enemy" with her superiors hoping the mech will put an end to the war quicker (THATS NOT HOW WAR WORKS DUMBASS!). As time went on and 59898 and her owner continued working together on missions, they both came closer, at some point, her owner decided to give 59898 a name, as she herself was from China and did part time for a maid cafe, she thought to give 59898 the name "Ai" and hoped that after the war, the 2 of them can go back to china and live a normal life in peace. But, this is GFL, theres no happy endings.
Red alert happens and something starts attacking the base prompting Ai and her Owner to spring into action and combat them, as the battle escalated, the two had to split up, however an explosion happens and cuts off the recording there, causing some confusion to Kalina who was decrypting the data, she later finds a recording showcasing what happened after the battle, however from what happened, Ai was set on standby and set aside somewhere stuck in low power mode, some passerby workers are curious as to what happened to her and her pilot, according to one of the workers, Ai's pilot ended up taking a bullet for Ai and was KIA, moments later the recording comes to an end.
On her MOD3 story, we see the same scene from her pre-mod cutscene, however Ai is decked out in her new armour and equipment. And thats it. Now, how about some foreshadowing? because as Ai left for a mission, Kalina had a brief talk with Springfield before heading to work herself. Let me just past the last bit of the conversation.
Kalinaļ¼Still, Springfield, arenāt you going toā¦? I mean, if you make the request, thereās no way the Commander would refuse you.
Springfieldļ¼About thatā¦ itās not yet time. If the day comes when I think, āI absolutely have to do thisā, Iāll do it.
The genius who decided to give the co-pilot of a mecha some obscure, extremely obsolete bolt action rifle needs to be fired.
She was probably imprinted upon joining GnK. Her past exploit, arbitrarily, has no bearing over which weapon she gets because back then, the game sells itself as gun = waifu, the game. But now she has a futuristic weapon, wooo.
Still, I am learning a lot of dolls' non GNK-issued name these days, from Sabrina to Ai. And the lore is slowly leaving the whole `guns as waifu` shtick as it embraces its `Tdolls in a dystopian future` part. I think that's great because now they can really write a damn good story while integrating lore and gameplay into one as well as lampshading why things the way they are instead of just asspulling plot because things have to happen.
The genius who decided to give the co-pilot of a mecha some obscure, extremely obsolete bolt action rifle needs to be fired.
All the weapons G&K uses are considered "old and obsolete" by the time of the game, IIRC. The military is the one with the shiny toys. Well, them and Paradeus somehow.