Last week, Grammarly unveiled a contentious feature that employs AI to mimic editorial feedback, creating the illusion that users are receiving critiques from figures like novelist Stephen King, the late scientist Carl Sagan, or tech journalist Kara Swisher. However, Grammarly did not obtain consent from the numerous experts featured in this function, referred to as “Expert Review,” to utilize their names.

Julia Angwin, one of the affected writers and a journalist, has initiated a class action lawsuit against Superhuman, the company that owns Grammarly, claiming that the organization infringed on the privacy and publicity rights of her and the other writers it represented. This class action allows other writers to join Angwin in her legal action.

“After decades of perfecting my craft as a writer and editor, I am disheartened to learn that a tech firm is profiting off a fraudulent version of my hard-earned knowledge,” Angwin expressed in a statement.

The irony of this situation is palpable — Angwin has dedicated her career to investigating how tech companies affect privacy. Other critics of such technology, including prominent AI ethicist Timnit Gebru, were also featured in Grammarly’s “Expert Review.”

The “Expert Review” feature, offered exclusively to subscribers at $144 annually, unfortunately falls short of its promise to provide meaningful feedback.

Casey Newton, the creator and editor of the tech newsletter Platformer and another individual impersonated by Grammarly, input one of his articles into the system and received feedback from Grammarly’s representation of tech journalist Kara Swisher. The feedback generated by Grammarly’s imitation of Swisher was so indistinct that it raises the question of why the company would bother using these writers’ personas at all.

This is what Grammarly’s representation of Kara Swisher suggested to him: “Could you briefly compare how daily AI users versus AI skeptics articulate risk, creating a through-line readers can follow?”

Newton conveyed the message from the AI’s rendition of Kara Swisher to the actual, living Kara Swisher.

“You greedy information and identity thieves better prepare for me to unleash my full McConaughey on you,” Swisher texted Newton (in reference to Grammarly). “Also, you suck.”

Grammarly has since taken down the “Expert Review” feature, as reported in a LinkedIn post by Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra. While Mehrotra issued an apology, he continued to advocate for the concept behind the feature.

“Envision your professor refining your essay, your sales manager reworking a customer pitch, an insightful critic questioning your arguments, or a prominent expert enhancing your proposal,” he articulated. “For experts, this is an opportunity to forge that same pervasive connection with users, similar to what Grammarly has established.”