7 ms·
Grammarly is offering ‘expert’ AI reviews from famous dead and living writers
See also:
Grammarly is using our identities without permission, https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/890921/grammarly-ai-expert-reviews https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/890921/g..., https://archive.ph/1w1oO https://archive.ph/1w1oO
- its_stephen 7mo ago[dead]
- himata4113 7mo agoGrammarly seemed pretty dead on arrival the moment they added AI features. They would have said a lot more relevant and kept the costs down if they were strictly no-ai imo.
- bayindirh 7mo agoThe funny thing is, their core "grammar" engine has to work on a language model + some hard heuristics anyway. So they were on a path to utilize this thing for real good, with concrete benefits. Generative AI is a plague at this point. Everybody is adding to their wares to see what happens. It's almost like ricing a car. All noise, no go.
- drbig 7mo agoThe most interesting is the realization that if the LLM's input is only the output of a professional (human), then by definition the LLM cannot mimic the process the (human) professional applied to get from whatever input they had to produce the output. In other words an LLM can spit out a plausible "output of X", however it cannot encode the process that lead X to transform their inputs into their output.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo agoIs it not possible for the process of input to output be inferred by the llm and therefore applied to new inputs to create appropriate outputs.
- whizzter 7mo agoOnly if the LLM knows the inputs connected to particular outputs, pre-digital era or classified material might not be available, neither informal discussions with other experts. Most importantly, negative but unused signals might not be available if the text does not mention it.
- simianwords 7mo agochallenge: provide a single example where the LLM can only provide the output and not the steps? (in text scenario)
- latexr 7mo agoAn LLM can always output steps, but it doesn’t mean they are true, they are great at making up bullshit. When the “how many ‘r’ in ‘strawberry’” question was all the rage, you could definitely get LLMs to explain the steps of counting, too. It was still wrong.
- simianwords 7mo agocan you provide a single example now with gpt 5.4 thinking that makes up things in steps? lets try to reproduce it.
- latexr 7mo agoI’m pretty sure you can think of one yourself, I’m not going to play this game. Now it’s 5.4 Thinking, before that it was 5.3, before that 5.2, 5.1, 5, before that it was 4… At every stage there’s someone saying “oh, the previous model doesn’t matter, the current one is where it’s at”. And when it’s shown the current model can’t do something, there’s always some other excuse. It’s a profoundly bad faith argument, the very definition of moving the goal posts. I do have a number of examples to give you, but I no longer share those online so they aren’t caught and gamed. Now I share them strictly in person.
- weird-eye-issue 7mo agoReplace "LLM" with "student" and read that again. You don't just blindly give students output, you teach them, like what you are supposed to do with an LLM.
- shafyy 7mo agoEnough with this analgoy. It's flawed on so many levels. First and foremost, stop devaluing humanitiy and hyping up AI companies by parroting their party line. Second, LLMs don't learn. They can hold a very limited amount of context, as you know. And every time you need to start over. So fuck no, "teaching" and LLM is nothing like teaching an actual human.
- KeplerBoy 7mo agoIt all went south when we started to call it "learning" instead of "fitting parameters".
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoI agree with ya so much. I have seen so many people even in hackernews somehow give human qualities to LLM's. This Grammarly thing seems to be a bastardized form of that not even sparing the dead. I'd say that there was some incentive by the AI companies to muddle up the water here.
- fxtentacle 7mo ago„Fitting“ is still too nice of a word choice, because it implies that it’s easy to identify the best solution. I suggest „randomly adjusting parameters while trying to make things better“ as that accurately reflects the „precision“ that goes into stuffing LLMs with more data.
- bonoboTP 7mo agoIt was called learning already back when the field was called cybernetics and foundational figures like Shannon worked on this kind of stuff. People tried to decipher learning in the nervous system and implement the extracted principles in machines. Such as Hebbian learning, the Perception algorithm etc. This stuff goes back to the 40s/50s/60s, so things must have gone south pretty early then.
- simianwords 7mo agoi don't get what the point of what you are saying is? i can ask it to explain how to solve an integral right now with steps. i can ask it to tell me how to write like a person X right now.
- Planktonne 7mo ago"Explain how to solve" and "write like X" are crucially different tasks. One of them is about going through the steps of a process, and the other is about mimicking the result of a process.
- simianwords 7mo agobut llm can do both. so what's the point? can you give a specific example of what an llm can't do? be specific so we can test it.
- plewd 7mo agolike OP originally said, the LLM doesn't have access to the actual process of the author, only the completed/refined output. Not sure why you need a concrete example to "test", but just think about the fact that the LLM has no idea how a writer brainstorms, re-iterates on their work, or even comes up with the ideas in the first place.
- simianwords 7mo agoi don't buy this logic. if i have studied an author greatly i will be able to recognise patterns and be able to write like them. ex: i read a lot of shakespeare, understand patterns, understand where he came from, his biography and i will be able to write like him. why is it different for an LLM? i again don't get what the point is?
- TimorousBestie 7mo agoThis is the plot of a short story of Borges’ called “Pierre Menard, the Author of Don Quixote.”
- treetalker 7mo agoYou've pinpointed the connection that people fail to make when they seek legal advice (or even information) from LLMs.
- JCharante 7mo agowhat prevents the input from being keystrokes and screen recordings of thousands of lawyers solving cases?
- treetalker 7mo agoThis makes the same error, or a related one. That input is not the lawyer's internal expert process, only the intermediate or (near-) final outcome of it.
- BrtByte 7mo agoLLMs obviously aren't reproducing the internal cognitive process, but they might still capture some of the structural patterns that emerge from it
- noslenwerdna 7mo agoInterestingly, there is some neuroscience research that transformer architecture resembles "cue based retrieval" in the human brain in some important ways. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X25000634 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X2...
- kome 7mo agothat's so scummy. why they even needs "names"? it's a rhetorical question...
- bayindirh 7mo agoMoreover, they don't even apologize: "The work is public, hence the name. It's well known, it's in the data. Who cares". What will they do next? Create similar publications with domainsquatting and write all-AI articles with the "public" names? Is it still fair use, then?
- kome 7mo agoyes i hate that. they still have the chutzpah of keeping doing it. and i am sure it's illegal in multiple legislation. because they are not writing articles where you can cite people, they are selling a product.
- bayindirh 7mo agoI think we can thank the current times and developments as a whole for unearthing the greediest of the greedy among us. It's very enlightening, if you ask me.
- SoKamil 7mo agoAuthority washing.
- dryadin 7mo agoFrankly, I am surprised this was not shut down by their legal counsel (assuming they have one and they actually asked). The legal exposure here is significant. This could be defamation, there are publicity rights issues, copyright, and maybe even criminal liability.
- beernet 7mo agoThis feels like a desperate attempt to stay relevant in a post-LLM world. They’re basically wrapping an LLM in a "professional" skin and calling it an expert review. The problem is that once you start letting an AI "expert" dictate tone and logic, you effectively lobotomize the writer’s original intent. We’re reaching a point where AI is just reviewing other AI-generated text, creating a feedback loop of pure mediocrity. Copium for middle management, if you ask me.
- Aerroon 7mo agoI disagree. You write when you have something to say. A service like Grammarly tries to help you convey what you want to say, but better. What you want to say is still up to you. Words paint the picture, but the meaning of the picture is what matters.
- ibejoeb 7mo agoThat's a tiny fraction. Most people write because they're told to write.
- NewsaHackO 7mo agoAre you talking about children or students? I think most people write because they want to communicate.
- Applejinx 7mo agoI would be surprised if the living writers can't sue over this.
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoMan I really don't like this at all. It really feels so wrong to spare nobody, not even dead writer/people. All it's gonna do is something similar to em-dashes where people who use it are now getting called LLM when it was their writing which would've trained LLM (the irony) If this takes off, hypothetically, we will associate slop with the writing qualities similar to how Ghibli art is so good but it felt so sloppy afterwards and made us less appreciate the Ghibli artstyle seeing just about anyone make it. The sad part is that most/some of these dead writers/artists were never appreciated by the people of their time and they struggled with so many feelings and writing/art was their way of expressing that. Van Gogh is an example which comes to my mind.[0] Many struggled from depression and other feelings too. To take that and expression of it and turn it into yet another product feels quite depressing for a company to do [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Vincent_van_Gogh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Vincent_van_Gogh
- bayindirh 7mo ago> It really feels so wrong to spare nobody, not even dead writer/people. That train left at full steam when companies scraped the whole internet and claimed it was fair use. Now it's a slippery slope covered with slime. I believe there'll be no slowing down from now on. They are doing something amazing, will they ask for permission? /s.
- senaevren 7mo agoA few things worth flagging: On GDPR: Using a named individual's identity to generate commercial AI output isn't obviously covered by "legitimate interest." Affected EU-based individuals likely have real grounds to object or request erasure. On IP/publicity rights: You can't copyright an editing style — but you absolutely can have a right of publicity claim when a company profits from your name and simulated judgment without consent. The Lanham Act's false endorsement provisions could also be in play here. The kicker: The "sources" cited by the feature were broken, spammy, or pointed to completely unrelated content. So the defense that suggestions are inspired by someone's actual work may not even hold up technically.
- josefritzishere 7mo agoThis feels illegal. Even if it's not, it further drives the perception that AI is only good for crime, like crypto.
- chilipepperhott 7mo agoI know all press is good press... but there are limits. If it feels like Grammarly does not respect your right to digital sovereignty, it is because it does not.
- mikeocool 7mo agoIt almost seems like this whole feature is designed to invite law suits. Seems pretty likely usage of Grammarly's core product has cratered in the past few years. Not totally hard to imagine one of the big AI labs paying their legal fees in exchange for putting this out there and kick starting the legal process on some of these issues.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoLLMs basically made Grammarly irrelevant as a product. Why have a tool to correct your grammar when you can just have it write the whole piece for you. And one things LLMs do well is construct grammatically correct text. So IMO they are just flinging things at the wall trying to find a way back.
- abirch 7mo agoAs Annie Duke said in her book Quit, "quitting on time usually feels like quitting too early." Grammarly was a great in the 2010s, but now it's too easily replaced. It reminds me of winzip.
- nxobject 7mo agoDepressingly enough, if Grammarly does throw in the hat, we'll lose an application of clear utility that could be run entirely locally.
- abirch 7mo agoIt seems like there are many apps that can be run locally that use LLMs. Although I haven't used this, I found it on reddit and it's made by a student. https://github.com/theJayTea/WritingTools https://github.com/theJayTea/WritingTools Seems like there could be others that are better.
- BrtByte 7mo agoThe weird part about tools like this isn't just the copyright question, it's the simulation of authority
- ludicrousdispla 7mo agoYeah, this is like applying a stained-glass image filter to your portrait in order to achieve sainthood.
- tsunamifury 7mo agoI spent a great deal of time trying to do this at allofus.ai with a team of ex-googlers with our goal being to help creators eventually 'own' their personas and drive and compete to use them to help end users. We believed this was coming and that the best way to handle it was give the real person control over their persona to grow/edit/change and train it as they see fit. I actually own the patent on building an expert persona based on the context of the prompt plus the real persons learned information manifold...
- bigbuppo 7mo agoSo what you're saying is that you can put a stop to crap like this by slinging a C&D their way?
- etchalon 7mo ago"We can do it because no one can stop us."
- k__ 7mo agoI offer my expertise in tech writing to review your AI articles and docs.
- jacquesm 7mo agoDigital necrophilia. The living ones are the ones that are going to have to make the objections here. This is revolting at so many levels.
- pilooch 7mo agoRevolting and so inevitable though I believe: we're sort of running these already in our minds, we'll be outrun here too.!
- thesuitonym 7mo agoThere is an unimaginably large gulf of distance between an individual thinking about what an author would say about their writing, and a corporate entity selling the "opinion" of an LLM asked to act like someone.
- PessimalDecimal 7mo agoYou probably mean necromancy.
- wetpaws 7mo ago[dead]
- jacquesm 7mo ago> You probably mean necromancy. I probably did not. Then I would have written that. They are fucking over the dead. They are clearly not communicating with the dead.
- mynameisvlad 7mo agoWhat's with the excessively hostile attitude? That's more of a Reddit thing than a semi-professional discussion site that has this as a guideline: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
- zamadatix 7mo agoFor the main link to the wired article as well: https://archive.is/2Qbdu https://archive.is/2Qbdu
- randusername 7mo ago> When asked if Superhuman considered notifying the people named in its AI feature, or requesting their permission, Gay said, “The experts in Expert Review appear because their published works are publicly available and widely cited.” Big difference between "AI, rewrite this passage to sound more like Hunter S Thompson" and "Grammarly-brand unauthorized digital agent Hunter S Thompson, provide a critique of my writing" Let's see what company values informed this decision [0]. > At Grammarly, it all starts with our EAGER values: Ethical, Adaptable, Gritty, Empathetic, and Remarkable. These values are guiding lights that keep the Grammarly experience compassionate and our business competitive. [0]: https://www.grammarly.com/about https://www.grammarly.com/about
- dolebirchwood 7mo ago> it all starts with our EAGER values Sounds like something I'd expect to see on a banner in an elementary school classroom.
- Matl 7mo agoMany CEOs treat their employees like kids in elementary school to make themselves feel smarter.
- kleene_op 7mo agoEAGER is not enough. EAGER only guarantees one side of the conjoined triangles of success. They teach this at business school.
- Alan_Writer 7mo agoWhy Grammarly has to come to this point even knowing that this is not only "controversial" somehow, but rare? Does it add any value for writers?
- fritzo 7mo agoThis is great! One lesson they might draw from the negative press is to offer a more open-ended interface, like ChatGPT, where for years people have already been asking "Pretend you are X and review my writing". This interface design pattern gives the press nowhere to point their angry fingers
- cynicalsecurity 7mo agoIs anyone still using Grammarly? Their app has been replaced with a single AI query.
- idontlikenigge 7mo ago[flagged]
- zac23or 7mo agoI had a very bad experience with Datadog. They seem to be big scammers. For me, Grammarly gives me the same impression as Datadog, but I have no explanation for why I feel that way.
- Cameri 7mo agoThe writer of the article confesses to using LLMs to improve their grammar. Writer is then upset Grammarly correctly attributes the recommendation he is getting to someone they know. A nothing burger essentially.