Can your favorite author give you feedback on your writing?

The website Grammarly, recently rebranded under the company name Superhuman, has long had a number of generative AI tools that help users improve their writing. It can “humanize” voice, paraphrase text or predict the grade a student would get on a paper. But a new feature offers users an “expert review” from some of their favorite authors, both living and dead. The idea is that Stephen King, say, could review a writer’s latest horror story, or Carl Sagan could give feedback on an astronomy paper.

The legality here is murky, of course. Grammarly, which is still the name of the writing “partner” tool, includes a disclaimer that none of the authors whose opinion it virtually offers have consented to this. The ethics of “expert review” are also in question.

But the company stands by it.

“Our Expert Review agent examines the writing a user is working on, whether it’s a marketing brief or a student project on biodiversity, and leverages our underlying LLM to surface expert content that can help the document’s author shape their work …,” Jen Dakin, senior communications manager at Superhuman, told Wired. “The Expert Review agent doesn’t claim endorsement or direct participation from those experts; it provides suggestions inspired by works of experts and points users toward influential voices whose scholarship they can then explore more deeply.”