Grammarly pulls AI author-impersonation tool after backlash

Writing tool Grammarly has disabled an AI feature which mimicked personas of prominent writers, including Stephen King and scientist Carl Sagan, following a backlash from people impersonated.

The Expert Review function, which offered writing feedback "inspired by" the styles of famous authors and academics, was taken down this week by Superhuman, the tech firm which runs Grammarly.

The feature was met with resistance, including a multi-million dollar lawsuit, from writers who found their names and reputations used as "AI personas" without their consent.

Shishir Mehrotra, the firm's chief executive, apologised on LinkedIn, acknowledging the tool had "misrepresented" the voices of experts.

Julia Angwin, an investigative journalist whose persona was one of those used in the feature, has filed a class-action federal lawsuit in the US against Superhuman and Grammarly.

Writing on social media, Angwin said: "I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent."

According to legal filings cited by Wired, the action was launched on Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.

It states Angwin, on behalf of herself and others in a similar position, "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".

The lawsuit argues it is "unlawful to appropriate peoples' names and identities for commercial purposes," and seeks to stop the platform from attributing advice to experts that they "never gave".

The damages sought exceed $5m (£3.7m), Wired reports.

Grammarly was founded in 2009 as a writing-review tool and began integrating a suite of generative-AI tools in August 2025.

Part of this was the Expert Review function which appears to have launched without the named famous personas introduced later.

Although the company began rebranding to Superhuman in October, Grammarly was kept as the name of its main service.

As criticism mounted in recent days, Superhuman initially said it would maintain the feature but allow those named to "opt-out", according to The Verge.

Wes Fenlon, a gaming journalist whose persona was used in the tool, wrote on BlueSky: "Opt-out via email is a laughably inadequate recourse for selling a product that verges on impersonation and profits on unearned credibility."

Mehrotra said in response to the backlash: "Over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices.

"This kind of scrutiny improves our products, and we take it seriously."

He said the AI agent had drawn on "publicly available information from third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions inspired by the published work of influential voices".

The firm's chief executive apologised, adding: "We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this."