Grammarly’s “Expert Reviews” Just Lacking Actual Experts

Grammarly’s latest additions aim to improve your writing with the help of some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers, as well as some technology journalists.

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 suggest revisions “from the perspective” of a subject matter expert.

Wired pointed out that Grammarly framed this feedback as if it came from a famous author, living or dead. In some cases, they appear to come from technology journalists from publications such as The Verge, Wired, Bloomberg, and The New York Times, according to The Verge.

Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder. How about TechCrunch? I copy-pasted an early draft of this post into Grammarly in hopes of getting some tips from my TC colleagues, but instead I was told to add ethical context like Casey Newton, “use anecdotes to condition readers” like Kara Swisher, and “raise larger accountability issues” like Timnit Gebru.

All were quite disappointing. Admittedly, this feature seems poorly thought out, but if all the other pubs get mentioned, what’s wrong with us?

Anyway, to state the obvious, none of these individuals appear to be involved with Expert Reviews, nor have they authorized Grammarly 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 work is public and widely cited.”

Grammarly also notes in the feature’s user guide that “references to experts in Expert Reviews are for informational purposes only and do not imply any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities.”

I think that’s pretty clear. However, this raises the following questions: In what sense does Grammarly actually offer “expert reviews”? Probably nothing at all, as historian CE Aubin told Wired. “These are not expert reviews because there are no ‘experts’ involved in writing the reviews.”