Question about phenotypes

I guess phenotypes were added a few months ago.  Was a phenotype randomly assigned to my existing civs?  It looks like it?  My House Liao guys are now "artificial" and my space wasps are "plantoid".  And I can't change this in the interface.  Any chance we could have that be editable without going into the xml files?  Or is there a way and I'm just not seeing it.  (I'm pretty sure that's not what "phenotype" means either, but that's no big.)