The Expert Review feature analyzes a user’s text and generates feedback on what was written from the perspective of scholars, journalists, and other specialists. Parent company Superhuman said Wednesday that it is changing course after substantial backlash.
Grammarly launched the Expert Review feature last summer as part of its expansion into AI productivity agents. The tool lets users select an expert and receive AI-generated feedback modeled on that person’s work. After it was discovered that the AI referenced real people, including deceased scholars, the feature drew swift criticism from academics and journalists.
After criticism, Superhuman said it disabled the Expert Review feature and will redesign it so experts can control whether and how they are represented. Before the change, experts had to manually opt out if they did not want to be included, a policy critics said was unacceptable.
Others, including author and editor Benjamin Dreyer, mocked the company’s opt-out policy in a post responding to the feature.
In a statement shared with Decrypt, Ailian Gan, Grammarly’s director of product management for agents, said the company disabled the Expert Review feature after feedback showed it had “missed the mark.”
“As we innovate at the edge of AI, it is important to us that we continue to seek the best ways to help people feel agency over technology and that they can shape it to meet their needs,” Gan wrote. “Thanks for holding us accountable. We are committed to getting it right next time and will be transparent about how we improve from here.”
