I was using Grammarly long before it started to market itself as an AI-enabled tool. I always thought of it as a glorified spellchecker, there to help people who write catch any silly mistakes they’ve made. 

Judging from its recent marketing, that’s not what it’s for anymore. Now it’s a tool to help people who can’t write pretend that they can. It wants to help you fake it because you lack the talent to make it. 

This is beginning to irritate me. I don’t want a tool that writes for me. I want a tool that points out that I may have made an error.

Today, Grammarly sent me a new marketing email, titled “Your writing called. It wants you to work less” See how witty that is? Look closer and see how the message is that all writing is work and you’d be better off spending your time doing something else. Maybe watching Netflix or scrolling through TikTok?

They offered me AI tools that would help me to “stand out without burn out”. Again, see how witty that is? Look closer and see how it says I can go from almost not able to cope to being outstanding without any effort?That sounds convincing, don’t you think? I was especially impressed by the creativity of selling me the ability to stand out by using the same tool every other talent-challenged person is using. It must be meant humorously or they’d be insulting my intelligence, wouldn’t they?

Here’s what they offered:

What caught my eye was the alleged ability of the Paraphraser to make my writing sound more human.

The thing is, I am human. Grammarly is the piece of code. So, if I don’t sound human, does that mean I sound more like a piece of code, like Grammarly? If that is so, how likely is it that I can fix the problem by letting a piece of code rewrite what I wrote?

To me, this felt like Grammarly offering to let their AI teach me how to pass the Turing Test. 

Either someone in their marketing department has a wicked sense of humour, or the AI they use to write their marketing does.