{"id":380857,"date":"2026-03-12T06:46:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T06:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/380857\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T06:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T06:46:23","slug":"grammarly-allegedly-misappropriated-names-of-journalists-says-class-action-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/380857\/","title":{"rendered":"Grammarly Allegedly \u2018Misappropriated\u2019 Names of Journalists, Says Class Action Suit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Wired\u2019s Miles Klee reported<\/a> on Grammarly\u2019s AI text editing feature, called \u201cExpert Review\u201d which uses the names of journalists and other literary figures in conjunction with revision advice for writers. These experts\u2014including my Gizmodo colleague Raymond Wong<\/a>\u2014served as \u201cinspiration,\u201d according to Grammarly. Writers had not been consulted about their inclusion.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Expert Review feature was pulled.<\/a> But on that same day, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Grammarly<\/a>, alleging that the feature \u201cmisappropriated\u201d the identities of the figures who ostensibly inspired it.<\/p>\n

The class in the class action lawsuit currently only has one named member: investigative journalist Julia Angwin, although it name checks notable figures named by Grammarly such as Stephen King. According to the text of the filing<\/a>, the suit \u201cchallenges Grammarly\u2019s misappropriation of the names and identities of hundreds of journalists, authors, writers, and editors to earn profits for Grammarly and its owner, Superhuman.\u201d<\/p>\n

As noted in the lawsuit, California Civil Code \u00a7 3344(a)(1) reads as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAny person who knowingly uses another\u2019s name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods, or services, without that person\u2019s prior consent, or, in the case of a minor, the prior consent of their parent or legal guardian, shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s no demand in the suit for a specific sum of money in damages, though it does say \u201cthe amount in controversy exceeds $5 million.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Angwin spoke to Wired\u2019s Klee<\/a> for a story about the suit, and told him the feature wasn\u2019t the sort of \u201canodyne\u201d AI fluff she expected trying to sand down people\u2019s writing, but instead was \u201ckind of actively making it worse,\u201d and added, \u201cI was surprised at how bad it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his Wednesday LinkedIn post<\/a> apologizing saying and the feature is temporarily disabled, CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote that \u201cthe agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans.\u201d He and his company \u201crecognize we fell short on this,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The LinkedIn post is not about the class action suit. Gizmodo reached out to Grammarly for a comment on the suit, and will update if we hear back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, Wired\u2019s Miles Klee reported on Grammarly\u2019s AI text editing feature, called \u201cExpert Review\u201d which uses the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,88736,19,17,7539,82,174962],"class_list":{"0":"post-380857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-grammarly","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-stephen-king","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-writing-advice"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116214863175138895","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}