Grammarly enraged journalists, writers, and academics with its “Expert Reviews” feature, which impersonated both dead and living authors without their permission.
According to Grammarly, the tool allows users to “take your writing to the next level” with inspired suggestions from “leading professionals, writers, and subject matter experts.”
The feature, which was only available after a free trial through the company’s $12-per-month Pro subscription, generated an explosive negative reaction.
“You greedy thieves of information and identity had better be ready to attack you all out,” boiled Tech journalist Kara Swisher, whose advice the feature claims to provide. “Besides, you’re useless.”
Now, Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Grammarly owner Superhuman, has announced that the company is “disabling” the offending feature, “while we re-imagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control over how they want to be represented — or not represented at all.”
“Over the past week, we have received legitimate critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent has misrepresented their voices,” they wrote in a letter. Post on LinkedIn. “This type of testing improves our products, and we take it seriously.”
“We listen to the feedback and recognize that we fell short on this,” he said. “I want to apologize and acknowledge that we will reconsider our approach moving forward.”
It remains to be seen whether the company’s decision will calm public anger.
This feature leaves a lot to be desired, highlighting the persistent pain points that plague large language model-based tools like this. Even when the writer and copy editor was Benjamin Dreyer Copy-paste paragraphs of Lorem IpsumWhich is dummy placeholder text commonly used in graphic design, the feature earned him suggestions from authors including venerable novelist Stephen King.
The company appears to want it both ways – benefiting from the implications of the association with major writers while distancing itself from the fine print. a disclaimer Viewed by platformercasey newton Buried deep in the company’s documentation hedges that references to these experts “are for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities.”
Nonetheless, the company’s use of people’s names without their sign-off became a bitter issue in the AI discussion. Even Newton himself had a virtual version found giving writing advice.
He further wrote, “I have long assumed that before long, AI could take my job.” platformer. “I just assumed someone would tell me when it would happen.”
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