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Grammarly’s parent company Superhuman shut down Expert Review, a feature that generated AI writing feedback under the names and likenesses of real authors, scientists, and academics – none of whom had consented. Launched in August 2025, the tool pulled from third-party LLMs to reconstruct personas of living and deceased writers, then presented their supposed feedback to users. A class action lawsuit followed, and the opt-out mechanism Grammarly offered was widely criticized as insufficient, especially for the dead. CEO Shishir Mehrotra framed the shutdown as a pause to reassess. The case lands in a growing gray zone where companies treat public biographical data as fair game for synthetic personas, a pattern that has already drawn legal scrutiny at startups and major platforms alike.
