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Commentary: Why an AI firm known for fighting plagiarism has real authors in a fury

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Commentary: Why an AI firm known for fighting plagiarism has real authors in a fury

The online service Grammarly originated in 2009 as a suite of tools to help ferret out plagiarism in schoolwork or help students hone their grammar and spelling. Eventually it incorporated artificial intelligence bots as sources of its writing assistance.

In August 2025, however, the firm stepped way over the line of what is — or should be — permissible as an AI-generated service.

This was its “expert review” service, available to those willing to fork over up to $30 a month. The pitch was that subscribers could get their writing samples reviewed by established writers, including some household names as Stephen King and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and receive feedback from them about how to improve their prose.

This is an area I cover and there have been a lot of lows. But I still feel like this is a new low.

— Julia Angwin, technology journalist and plaintiff in a lawsuit against Grammarly

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A few problems have surfaced about this.

First, it appears that many, if not all, the cited “experts” haven’t granted Grammarly permission to use their names or work in connection with this service. Second, none of them actually reviewed the submitted writing samples — the samples were screened by AI bots, which generated the suggestions based on the authors’ published works.

Third, Grammarly didn’t make the truth clear to its users — the suggestions seemed on first impression to come directly from the cited “experts”; it was only when a user clicked through for more detail that Grammarly disclosed that its suggestions were “inspired” by the experts’ published works.

Last week, Grammarly suspended the “expert review” function. That happened the same day that Julia Angwin, a veteran technology and investigative journalist who has worked at the Wall Street Journal and Propublica, filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that Grammarly had in effect stolen the real authors’ identities and attributed to them advice that the authors might disagree with, or that might even undermine the authors’ reputations for sound writing.

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This isn’t the first time that someone has tried to use AI as a shortcut, with parlous consequences. Over the last couple of years, AI-generated material has appeared in legal briefs and medical diagnoses. Not a few news organizations have been caught publishing AI-generated articles without adequately disclosing that they weren’t written by humans.

Often, the shortcuts have been exposed because the AI bot outputs were riddled with errors — citations to nonexistent legal precedents, proposed medical treatments that were actually life-threatening, factual mistakes that even novice human journalists would know to avoid.

“Expert review” appeared at a time when many authors and artists are taking AI companies to court for allegedly violating copyright law by “training” their bots on published work without acknowledgment or payment.

Numerous lawsuits are making their way through the courts, although the judiciary hasn’t settled on a single conclusion about where the line stands distinguishing “fair use” from copyright infringement.

Yet one doesn’t need an AI bot to explain why Grammarly’s stunt has to rank among the sleaziest misuses of AI technology yet to appear.

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San Francisco-based Grammarly didn’t make things any better with a mea culpa posted on LinkedIn by its chief executive, Shishir Mehrotra. Grammarly’s AI agent, he wrote, “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.”

In other words, he asserted that “expert review” was designed as a boon not only for Grammarly’s users, but for the experts whose names and works had been exploited for the firm’s profit and without their say-so. He stated that Grammarly will “reimagine” its service to give the experts “real control over how they want to be represented — or not represented at all.”

In an email, Mehrotra responded to my request for comments by acknowledging that “we believe this feature missed the mark on what both experts and users expect out of us.” He added, however, that Grammarly considers the claims in Angwin’s lawsuit to be “without merit and will strongly defend against them.”

Grammarly hasn’t been shy about pushing AI-powered services to users. In November, it changed its corporate name to Superhuman, reflecting what it called its “mission … to unlock the superhuman potential in everyone.”

By then, “expert review” already had been launched. From the outset, the company was a little vague about what the service actually entailed. According to the web page originally posted to pitch the service (the page has since been removed but survives in a web archive), users could improve their writing by “drawing on insights from subject-matter experts and trusted publications.”

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Users were instructed to upload their document to the system. The bot then “cross-referenced your writing with relevant experts” and offered “specific … expert-informed feedback.” Users could then choose from a list of a few such experts, each offering a couple of lines of feedback.

Buried in the pitch were subtle disclaimers.

Grammarly slipped a warning onto its web page noting that its feedback was merely “inspired by real experts” and a further notification that its references to “experts” were “for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals.”

The roster of experts was impressive indeed. They included novelist King, astrophysicist Tyson and numerous book and magazine writers of varied eminence. I couldn’t reach King, and Tyson didn’t respond to my request for comment, but some other writers have made their reactions known via other routes.

The tech journalist Kara Swisher, for instance, answered a query from a fellow journalist by labeling the Grammarly folks “rapacious information and identity thieves.”

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It might have become obvious to some users that the likelihood was remote that their work was being personally vetted by the cited experts. I might have asked the respected grammarian William Strunk Jr., author of that indispensable primer “The Elements of Style,” what he thought about having been offered up by Grammarly as an expert writing coach, except that he died in 1946. Other deceased writers also have appeared on the roster, such as astronomer Carl Sagan (d. 1996).

“Expert review” coasted under the radar for months, until a few tech journalists caught its scent. The first may have been Miles Klee of Wired, whose report appeared on March 3. Within days, similar reports appeared on The Verge and Defector.

It was a post by Casey Newton of Platformer, which listed several of Grammarly’s “experts,” that alerted Angwin that the company was exploiting her name and work. “They were attempting to take my livelihood and automate it,” she told me. “They were literally selling a service that claims that Julia Angwin will edit your piece. Obviously, that’s a direct threat to me and my ability to earn a living.”

Moreover, Angwin says, the edits that Grammarly proposed under her name to a user were “terrible — so they weren’t just stealing my livelihood but ruining my reputation.”

In its initial response to the burgeoning controversy, Grammarly offered to allow writers to opt out of “expert review” by sending the company an email. The problem there is that the “experts” have no way of knowing that there’s anything to opt out from, since Grammarly hasn’t published a comprehensive roster.

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As the author of eight books and years of newspaper columns, I was interested to know if my own name or works were offered. Grammarly told me only that its “data on experts was sourced from third-party LLMs [that is, AI bots]. … Experts were surfaced based on their expertise with the topic.” It added that it “won’t be providing additional comment at this time.”

The extent of Superhuman’s legal exposure for this program is hard to gauge. Angwin’s lawsuit, which seeks to empower a class of authors whose names were used by the company without their consent, cites California and New York laws barring the use of anyone’s name or likeness for commercial purposes without their consent.

As for how many people have been affected, Angwin’s attorney, Peter Romer-Friedman, told me that obtaining the full roster would be his first task under discovery if the case heads to trial. (Superhuman hasn’t yet responded to the lawsuit in court.) But he says more than 100 writers have reached out to say they want to be part of the case since it was filed, and speculates that the total number could be in the thousands.

“This is an area I cover,” Angwin says, “and there have been a lot of lows. But I still feel like this is a new low.”

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.

The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.

The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.

Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”

Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.

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Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.

Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.

In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.

Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.

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The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.

Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.

Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.

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Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.

At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.

Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.

Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,

Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.

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The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.

Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.

At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.

Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”

“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”

Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.

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Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.

“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.

“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”

Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.

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Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.

The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.

But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.

Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.

“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”

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What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.

Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”

Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.

Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.

While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.

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In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.

“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.

Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.

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