Grammarly’s ‘expert review’ is just missing the actual experts

A recently-added feature in Grammarly purports to improve users’ writing with help from the world’s great writers and thinkers — and some tech journalists, too.

Launched in August 2025 as part of a broader set of AI-powered features, Expert Review appears in the sidebar of Grammarly’s main writing assistant, allowing users to bring up revision suggestions “from the perspective” of subject matter experts.

Wired noted that this Grammarly frames this feedback as if it was coming from well-known authors, whether they’re living or dead. In some cases, according to The Verge, it can even appear to come from tech journalists at The Verge, Wired, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and other publications.

Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder: What about TechCrunch? I copy-pasted an early draft of this post into Grammarly in the hopes that that I might see some tips from my TC colleagues, but I was instead told to add ethical context like Casey Newton, “leverage the anecdote for reader alignment” like Kara Swisher, and “pose the bigger accountability question” like Timnit Gebru.

Which was all rather disappointing: Yes, the feature seems a bit thoughtless and ill-advised, but if all those other pubs are going to get mentioned, then what are we doing wrong?

Anyway, to state the obvious, none of these figures appear to be involved in Expert Reviews or to have given Grammarly permission to use their names. Alex Gay, vice president of product and corporate marketing at Grammarly’s parent company Superhuman, told The Verge that these experts are mentioned “because their published works are publicly available and widely cited.”

And in its user guide to the feature, Grammarly says, “References to experts in Expert Review are for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities.”

Which is reasonably clear, I guess. But it raises the question: In what sense is Grammarly actually providing an “expert review”? Perhaps none at all, as historian C.E. Aubin told Wired: “These are not expert reviews, because there are no ‘experts’ involved in producing them.”