AI Company's Use of Writers' Names Without Permission Sparks Lawsuit
Superhuman, the email and writing platform formerly known as Grammarly, trained an AI feature on professional writers' work and used their names to market it - without asking permission. The company discontinued the "Expert Review" feature in early March after facing a class-action lawsuit and public backlash.
The feature, which debuted quietly in August, offered users feedback styled as coming from AI versions of real writers. Investigative journalist Julia Angwin and Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, were among those whose names and work the company used without consent.
The On-Air Confrontation
During a recent episode of Patel's podcast Decoder, CEO Shishir Mehrotra faced direct questioning about the practice. Patel opened by stating plainly: "You do not have our permission to use our names to do this."
Mehrotra offered what amounted to a corporate apology, calling the feature poorly executed. "It wasn't good for experts, it wasn't good for users. It was a fairly buried feature. It had very little usage," he said.
When pressed on compensation, Mehrotra shifted the argument. He distinguished between attribution and impersonation, saying companies should credit sources but that using a name for attribution differs from impersonation itself. "There's a different line which is, should people be able to impersonate you? And I think that is a very different standard," Mehrotra said.
The Core Disagreement
Patel pushed back on this framing. The lawsuit centers on a specific issue: using writers' names and identities for commercial purposes without consent. "You were selling the software and names were appearing as inspired by our names," Patel said.
Mehrotra declined to engage further on the legal merits, deferring to the courts. The company maintains the lawsuit's claims lack merit.
The dispute reflects a broader tension as generative AI systems trained on human-created content become more common. Writers now face questions about who profits from their work and how their identities can be used.
For writers navigating AI tools, the case illustrates why consent and compensation matter - and why permission shouldn't be assumed.
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