Grammarly is doubling down on a controversial AI feature that uses real authors' names without permission. The company's "Expert Review" tool, which impersonates journalists and famous writers to add credibility to AI-generated suggestions, sparked immediate backlash after The Verge and Wired exposed it last week. Instead of walking back the feature, Grammarly's response offers an opt-out - forcing authors to actively remove themselves from a system they never consented to join.
Grammarly just told the world it plans to keep using your name and identity to sell its AI features - unless you specifically ask them to stop. The writing assistant platform, valued at over $13 billion in its last funding round, responded to mounting criticism this week not with an apology, but with what amounts to a grudging concession: affected authors can now request to be removed from its "Expert Review" system.
The feature turns real writers into AI personas. When Grammarly users draft documents, the tool offers feedback supposedly "in the style of" named journalists and authors - people who never agreed to train the AI, never licensed their names, and never received compensation. The Verge discovered its own staff had been turned into virtual editors, with reporter Sean Hollister and Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel finding their names attached to AI-generated writing advice they didn't create.
Wired broke the story wider last Wednesday, revealing the system impersonated authors far beyond tech journalism - including deceased writers who obviously couldn't consent. The publication showed how Grammarly's AI claimed to offer feedback "like" these established voices, borrowing their credibility to make generic suggestions feel authoritative.
