Grammarly a legal battle after journalist Julia Angwin filed a class action lawsuit against the company over its Expert Review, which uses real people's identities without their consent. The lawsuit alleges privacy and publicity rights violations by the platform's artificial intelligence.
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Expert Review launched in August 2025 as part of Grammarly, allowing users to receive editing suggestions “from the perspective” of specific topics. The AI analyzes users’ text and draws from publicly available content from writers, thinkers, and journalists from outlets like The Verge, Wired, Bloomberg , and The New York Times, without any involvement or consent from those individuals.
Julia Angwin discovered that her identity was being used through Casey Newton , another expert The Verge found while testing the feature. Several staff members were also found to be connected to Grammarly ’s AI suggestions , including editor-in-chief Nilay Patel . The lawsuit against parent company Superhuman alleges that these individuals’ privacy and publicity rights were violated.
Reactions and criticism for Grammarly Expert Review
Journalists and analysts have called the feature ethically problematic. Casey Newton of Platformer calls it “desperation” and a deliberate commodification of identities without involvement, worse than LLM because it curates real people in a paid product. Historian CE Aubin told Wired: “These are not expert reviews, because there are no ‘experts’ involved.”
Grammarly defends the feature through vice president Alex Gay, who claims it uses “publicly available and widely cited” works. However, the company clarifies in its documentation that the references are “for informational purposes only” and do not imply affiliation or endorsement.
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Critics like Ella Markianos point out the dangers of turning writing into “obedience training” through the “halo effect” and imitation. Forum users call the feature “creepy” and a magnet for litigation, questioning ethical approvals.
Impact on the AI writing market
Grammarly for AI writing assistance that has become commoditized due to free access to LLM through tools like Claude, ChatGPT , and Gemini, which offer superior editing and can mimic styles without nominal editing. Competitors like Junia.ai are pushing alternatives to Expert Review, while generic AI platforms are eroding the value of standalone tools.
Superhuman announced it was disabling the feature after launching an email inbox earlier this week where writers and academics could request to opt out. CEO Shishir Mehrotra said the 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.
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The lawsuit and backlash signal heightened legal risks for identity exploitation in AI, likely forcing consent mechanisms, opt-out options, or anonymous feedback. Grammarly may reframe or shift to non-persona AI amid LLM, as the industry moves toward hybrid human-AI loops that emphasize accountability rather than “borrowed intelligence.”
