For months, Grammarly has been using the identities of real people (including us) for its “Expert Review” AI suggestions without getting their permission, and now it’s facing a lawsuit from one of the journalists included, as previously reported by Wired. The class-action complaint filed by journalist Julia Angwin on Wednesday alleges that Superhuman violated the “experts’” privacy and publicity rights by breaking laws against using someone’s identity for commercial purposes without their consent.
Angwin says she found out her identity was used by way of Casey Newton, who is also one of the experts that The Verge uncovered being used by Grammarly when we tested the feature this week. Several current Verge staff members popped up attached to Grammarly’s AI-generated suggestions, too, including editor in chief Nilay Patel.
CEO Shishir Mehrotra says that “the agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans. We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this. I want to apologize and acknowledge that we’ll rethink our approach going forward.”