Grammarly’s ‘expert reviews’ are missing real experts.

The latest addition to Grammarly claims to improve users’ writing with help from some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers, as well as some tech journalists.

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

Wired points out that Grammarly frames this feedback as if it came from a well-known author, living or dead. According to The Verge, in some cases it may appear to come from technology journalists at The Verge, Wired, Bloomberg, The New York Times and other publications.

Of course, I couldn’t help but be curious. What about TechCrunch? I copied and pasted an early draft of this post into Grammarly in the hope of seeing some tips from my TC colleagues, but was instead told to add ethical context like Casey Newton, “use anecdotes to align readers” like Kara Swisher, and “raise larger accountability questions” like Timnit Gebru.

It was somewhat disappointing. Yes, this feature seems a bit frivolous and frivolous, but if All the other bars will be mentioned, but what are we doing wrong?

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

And in its user guide for this feature, Grammarly says, “Mentions of experts in Expert Review are for informational purposes only and do not imply any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement of that person or entity.”

I think it’s reasonably clear which one. But this raises a question. What does Grammarly actually mean by providing “expert reviews”? There may be none at all, as historian C.E. Aubin told Wired: “This review is not an expert review as there were no ‘experts’ involved in its creation.”