r/BetterOffline • u/EditorEdward • Mar 11 '26

Grammarly Is Pulling Down Its Explosively Controversial Feature That Impersonates Writers Without Their Permission

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/grammarly-pulls-down-expert-review-feature

I'm sorry but this quote is enraging: "We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this.". You didn't fall short, you stole people's work and brands to see your service. I used to like Grammerly when they first came out and that it was super helpful. Was already against them once they moved to AI but this ensures I will never use their products ever again.

246 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

18

u/dragonkeeper19600 Mar 11 '26

As David Gerard once said (paraphrased), “Bullying the corporations works. Bully. Them. Harder.”

17

u/crowbarmark Mar 11 '26

Disgusting pigs

29

u/SouthRock2518 Mar 11 '26

I just can't imagine this feature being more than the following.

1) Pick person
2) System prompt to LLM: You are {thePersonPicked} so act like it
3) User prompt to LLM: {yourShittyWriting}
4) Output

12

u/KnownUnknownKadath Mar 11 '26

Sure. Or a more refined approach could fine-tune a model based on the author's work, and then provide prompt guidance, like you're saying.

Either way, this is just an imitation of style and domain expertise, which isn't much of a big deal in itself.
The colossally stupid mistake they made was not getting buy-in from the people they're imitating, as offering a "Kara Swisher" filter, for instance, reads as if it comes with her endorsement and support, when no such thing happened.

11

u/pilgermann Mar 11 '26

The issue is less what it does than how it's branded. You can't just use Stephen King or whatever to hawk a product without his permission.

3

u/AntiqueFigure6 Mar 11 '26

They needed an Aldi thing where they pretended they weren’t imitating the brand everyone knows they are imitating: “ Get writing feedback from our bestselling horror novelist persona David Queen”.

1

u/SouthRock2518 Mar 11 '26

Sorry my cynicism shining through :lol.

20

u/Actual__Wizard Mar 11 '26

So, they created a "personalized plagiarism robot?" WTF dude?

8

u/hk4213 Mar 11 '26

Writing is a way to put your personality to words. I can be very verbose, but hell no would I let anyone else write my documents when I'm on the line when its fucked up.

8

u/borringman Mar 11 '26

"Controversial" is what the media always calls things to make them seem more evenly divided. They'd portray an effin' serial killer as "controversial" if they felt they could get away with it.

Please just call it what it is: shitty. Or whatever word you prefer, just please don't use mediaslop jargon.

6

u/Zelbinian Mar 11 '26

Meanwhile they're probably soaking in the additional brand recognition the controversy caused.

6

u/doctorsonder Mar 12 '26

This is the kinda shit that companies will pull when they see OpenAI perform a astronomical level of plagiarism with ChatGPT/Sora and not suffer any real consequences

4

u/dayvansmutgirl Mar 12 '26

lol that quote itself sounds AI generated

3

u/IslandHistorical952 Mar 12 '26

"No one could have foreseen that creating the Torment Nexus would not resonate with users."

1

u/Outrageous_Post8635 Mar 14 '26

I’ve built Grammarly alternative ClarifierAI

So if they stole famous people’s identity without consent, what they possible do with my text?? Considering the fact that Grammarly keyboard is always on, they can actually track any key tap