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This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the ups and downs of AI, follow Stevie Bonifield. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
Most people probably know Grammarly for its browser extension that suggests how to spruce up your emails, but over the past few years, it’s been eyeing bigger ambitions. In October, the company formerly known as Grammarly made a public pivot to rebrand as an AI company called Superhuman. The new name was adopted from Superhuman Mail, an AI email platform that Grammarly acquired in June 2025.
Superhuman CPO Noam Lovinsky vowed that “the Grammarly brand isn’t going anywhere.” Grammarly would live on as part of Superhuman, but the writing aid’s sidebar would increasingly become a hub for AI agents, rather than just grammar and spelling suggestions.
One of the rebrand’s most contentious elements actually appeared a few months prior to that big announcement. In August 2025, Grammarly quietly launched a feature called “Expert Review,” which according to a now-removed help page, offered users “insights from leading professionals, authors, and subject-matter experts.”
When a Grammarly user selected the Expert Review button, the feature would generate suggestions “inspired by” relevant experts, under their names alongside a checkmark icon. (What this verified-style icon was supposed to mean remains a mystery.) Screenshots on the feature’s help page showed it using the names of Stephen King, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan, among other famous writers and academics.
The side panel for Expert Review contained a subtle disclaimer stating that references to the experts in the feature “do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities.”
The feature went largely unnoticed for several months, flying under the radar until March 4th, when Wired reported that it had been spotted using the names of deceased professors to give writing feedback.
How it’s going
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