Grammarly ripped off famous writers using their names for AI-generated Expert Reviews. They're now allowing opt-outs

[highplainsdem]

which requires writers to find out if Grammarly has done this to them, then write to Grammarly to tell these AI company thieves they want to opt out of the AI charade.

Earlier thread about this:

Grammarly Is Offering 'Expert' AI Reviews From Your Favorite Authors--Dead or Alive (Wired. & Verge staff were also used)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221078055

Casey Newton's Bluesky posts about the opt-out.

NEWS: Grammarly tells me it will let "experts" like me opt out of having their names used against their will and for no compensation as part of its "expert review" feature www.platformer.news/grammarly-ex...

— Casey Newton (@caseynewton.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T00:07:55.640Z

I credit these comments from @karaswisher.bsky.social for the change

— Casey Newton (@caseynewton.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T00:09:54.487Z

Grammarly did not contact the writers to get their permission, and there's apparently no public list of all the writers they ripped off. Writers' names and fake advice will appear only when the AI links some writing submitted to Grammarly with certain well known writers.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

1. Kick

[highplainsdem]

2. Thanks!

[highplainsdem]

3. kick

[Renew Deal]

4. That's begging for a lawsuit

[highplainsdem]

5. They should sue. Grammarly is using AI companies' basic business model: Steal first and hope to get away with it.

[Renew Deal]

6. I can't imagine how you get away with it in this case.

It's one thing to ingest all works in all of history and ambiguously reproduce them. It's a whole other thing to effectively claim someone is on their staff and use their identity as a feature of the product.

[highplainsdem]

7. Did you read the earlier thread and the articles I linked to there? They don't pretend they've somehow

been able to get real experts like Stephen King to be on call to offer expert advice to Grammarly users.

This is their page about "Expert Review":

https://www.grammarly.com/ai-agents/expert-review

Expert Review feels like having trusted expert reviewers by your side. This AI agent provides high-quality, domain-specific feedback based on publicly available expert content, helping you meet the expectations of your field with confidence.

They apparently trained their AI on all the writing by these experts that they could steal.

And it is theft, for most of that training data (not theft from some of the deceased authors they're claiming as Grammarly experts, though it's theft from the authors who didn't die long ago, because copyright lasts decades beyond an author's death).

Grammarly refers to what's "publicly available" - clearly hoping people will confuse that with "public domain." Other AI companies like to do the same thing. It's trickery. Being publicly available does not negate copyright.

And it's a safe bet at least some Grammarly users will think they are getting direct advice from the authors named. And others will assume those famous authors are working with Grammarly to produce advice for writers that the AI will draw from to help users. Or at the very least those users will assume Grammarly has the writers' permission to do this.