Hi friends,

I never thought my life would lead me to being the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit. But here we are.

It all started Monday night when I read Casey Newton’s newsletter, Platformer, “Grammarly turned me into an AI editor against my will and I hate it.” Casey described a paid feature that the popular grammar editor had launched called Expert Review, which purported to offer users editing advice from experts like Casey. 

But Casey hadn’t consented to being an editor; had never even been contacted by the Grammarly or its parent company, Superhuman. “I’ve long assumed that before too long, AI might take my job. I just assumed that someone would tell me when it happened,” he wrote.

In the article, Casey noted that his tests of the product revealed that other journalists - including me - were being offered by Grammarly as “expert reviewers” as well. I was both honored and appalled to be included in a lineup of experts that included the bestselling novelist Stephen King and the feminist author bell hooks.

I posted on Bluesky about my outrage. And people started reaching out.

A friend texted me: “you should look into name/image/likeness claims.” I didn’t know about this field of law, but a few Google searches and AI summaries later, I found that most states - including New York where I live - have right of publicity laws that prohibit the commercial use of people’s name, image or likeness without their consent.

Grammarly appeared to be clearly violating the statute by offering my expertise as part of a paid service without my consent.

Another friend shared with me some screenshots and videos of what editing suggestions using my name looked like inside of Grammarly’s paid service. And it was worse than I could have imagined – the edits showed up in little bubbles in the doc, just like comments do in a Word or Google doc. 

The edits themselves ranged from anodyne comments like “sharpen the opening for instant reader urgency” to outright fabrications. Grammarly suggested replacing the first sentence of a news article about Facebook receiving sensitive health privacy information from hospital websites with a fictional anecdote of a patient named Laura.

“Laura, a patient searching for relief from a chronic condition, clicks through her hospital’s website to schedule an appointment. In just a few moments, her most private medical details - her reason for visiting, her doctor’s name, and even the treatment she seeks - are quietly sent to Facebook, without her knowledge,” the bot suggested with a button allowing the user to paste that excerpt straight into the article.

Making up lies to insert into a news article is not editing – its deception. And to have that type of dangerous deception attributed to my name outraged me.

I decided to hire an attorney: Peter Romer-Friedman. Back when I was working at ProPublica a decade ago, Peter had brought some civil rights lawsuits against Big Tech companies based on my reporting. So I knew he understood how to challenge a tech company using existing laws.

On Thursday, we filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York alleging that Grammarly’s use of writers’ names without their consent violated New York and California right of publicity laws.

That same day, Grammarly said it would disable the expert review feature. But the company also vowed to fight our lawsuit. In a statement to The Atlantic, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra said that the company “believes the legal claims are without merit and will strongly defend against them.”

On Friday, I published an article in the New York Times Opinion section (gift link) arguing that we need a federal right of publicity to ensure that everyone has the right to control the use of their identity in commercial products. 

Many have asked how they can find out if they were included as experts in the service, and whether they can join the lawsuit. There is currently no list publicly available of experts who were included in the service, but we hope to obtain one in discovery. And once the judge certifies the class action, everyone who was affected will automatically be part of the class.

My lawyers will continue to update on the progress of the case on their website. And I’ll also send occasional updates here in my newsletter. 

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Best

Julia