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Grammarly’s “Expert Review” feature, which was quietly rolled out last year, angered countless journalists, authors, and academics, who found that they were being impersonated without their permission.
Following an enormous backlash — and telling people being impersonated that they should email the company to opt out — Grammarly’s parent company, Superhuman, made a sudden reversal.
In a Wednesday LinkedIn post, CEO Shishir Mehrotra publicly apologized in a wordy post, saying that “over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices.”
“We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this,” he added.
What Mehrotra failed to mention was that the company wasn’t just dealing with hundreds of furious writers — it was facing litigation as well. Nonprofit news organization The Markup editor-in-chief Julia Angwin filed a class action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Wednesday afternoon, right around the time Mehrotra issued his apology.
As Wired reports, the suit doesn’t call for a specific amount of damages, but suggests it’s at least $5 million.
The suit “challenges Grammarly’s misappropriation of the names and identities of hundreds of journalists, authors, writers, and editors to earn profits for Grammarly and its owner, Superhuman.”
“I have worked for decades honing my skills as a writer and editor, and I am distressed to discover that a tech company is selling an imposter version of my hard-earned expertise,” said Angwin in a statement.
Superhuman appears to have been blindsided by the outrage its impersonating bot stirred up.
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