Last week, my colleagues discovered that Superhuman’s Grammarly had turned me into an AI editor, using my real name, without ever asking my permission. They did the same to my boss Nilay Patel, my colleagues David Pierce and Tom Warren, and — as Wired initially reported last Wednesday — many authors far more famous than us. Grammarly’s new “Expert Review” feature uses our names to give its AI suggestions credibility that they don’t deserve.
Now, Grammarly has finally addressed the backlash — but not by apologizing, and not by walking the feature back. For now, it will graciously give us the chance to opt out of something we didn’t know it was doing to begin with.
The company also provided this statement to Casey and to The Verge, from Alex Gay, vice president of product and corporate marketing at Superhuman:
We’ve heard the feedback about this tool and appreciate the engagement from those who have taken the time to raise thoughtful questions about the functionality and the experts surfaced. We agree that the product experience can be improved for both users and experts. The agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship that add value to their work. We want the people behind those perspectives to have greater control over whether their name is used, while providing new ways for influential voices to reach new audiences. Our goal is to improve Expert Review to deliver this outcome.
There’s not a single word about “permission” in that statement, and no sign that Grammarly is walking back the idea. It sounds like the company fully intends to keep pretending real human beings are behind its edits, just with “greater control.”
For what it’s worth, we asked Superhuman whether it would provide any protection for our names other than an opt-out email. This was the reply from spokesperson Jen Dakin: “We are working on further refining the feature in addition to the opt-out option.”
Superhuman had better offer authors “greater control” over their own names than an email address, because email is a ridiculous solve for the problem.
How would we have known our names were being appropriated unless we tried the product ourselves? Shouldn’t people deserve to have their names protected even if they’ve never heard of Grammarly? Shouldn’t they have that opportunity even if they don’t know anyone who uses Grammarly? Why should we have to do the work of protecting our own names at all?
I don’t use Grammarly, and the only reason I found out my name was appropriated is because two journalists at The Verge decided to test it. We can’t do that for everyone.