2026-03-12 16:00:41
After backlash over their tool that pretends to provide expert editing advice, Grammarly shut down the AI feature. Now they face a class action lawsuit. Miles Klee reports for Wired:
Julia Angwin, an award-winning investigative journalist who founded The Markup, a nonprofit news organization that covers the impact of technology on society, is the only named plaintiff in the suit, which does not call for a specific amount in damages but argues that damages across the plaintiff class are in excess of $5 million. She was among the many individuals, alongside Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson, offered up via Grammarly’s “Expert Review” tool as a kind of virtual editor for users.
The federal suit, filed Wednesday afternoon in the Southern District of New York, states that Angwin, on behalf of herself and others similarly situated, “challenges Grammarly’s misappropriation of the names and identities of hundreds of journalists, authors, writers, and editors to earn profits for Grammarly and its owner, Superhuman.”
2026-03-12 15:44:28
Upon finding out that Grammarly uses AI-generated editing, supposedly driven by real authors, Casey Newton for Platformer kicked the tires on the fakery.
And there, hovering near the top of the draft, was John Carreyrou, the investigative journalist and bestselling author who took down Theranos. I’d pay good money for advice from the real Carreyrou, whose dogged pursuit of the truth behind Elizabeth Holmes’ company in the face of overwhelming legal threats is the stuff of legend. Alas, the fake Carreyrou conjured by Grammarly offered only the most anodyne of advice.
As Newton points out, plenty (or all) LLMs are driven by data that was slurped up from any available resource. So any generated writing is based on someone else’s, but Grammarly took the extra step of putting real author and writer names against the generated output without asking.
Update Grammarly is now facing a class action lawsuit and shutdown the feature.
Tags: authors, Grammarly, likeness, Platformer
2026-03-12 02:15:24
School children were killed in the poorly informed attack. The New York Times reports on the unconscionable mistake:
The Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part, the preliminary investigation found. Officers at U.S. Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, people briefed on the investigation said.
Tags: Iran, New York Times, school
2026-03-11 19:20:17
Shri Khalpada, as a technologist and musician, thinks through his mixed feelings for AI-generated music.
A tool that jumps straight to the output short-circuits all of that. The output arrives before any discovery can happen. This treats creativity as a productivity or “content creation” problem, where getting to the output as easily as possible is the goal.
There are of course parts of the music making process that are tedious and frustrating. An experienced producer sketching out an arrangement quickly or using AI to test a melodic idea before committing to it would be helpful. These cases straddle the line between a tool that helps us make music and a tool that generates it for us. I think these use cases can be much more straightforwardly helpful.
The essay includes samples of AI-generated music against human-made music, and like writing passages, it is difficult to pick which is generated.
However, as Khalpada argues, making music is more than a factory churning out songs to fill space in elevators.
My kids take piano lessons and they often have to struggle through new songs before they get it right. Sometimes the songs are more difficult than usual, so when they finally get it, the joy and sense of accomplishment is multiplied. The thought of replacing that with a magic machine that spits out music with zero traction just seems wrong.
Tags: generative, music, PerThirtySix, Shri Khalpada
2026-03-11 15:40:39
We are approaching a point (or we’re here already) where generated output is not much different from human-made things. So instead of deciphering what is fake and real, we might be asking which is better. For the New York Times, Kevin Roose and Stuart A. Thompson have a quiz that asks which writing passage reads better to you.
These are isolated, short passages that don’t require sustained coherence, so it’s hard to tell the difference in the examples. Longer passages or articles would probably favor human writers, for now. I am curious if a decade from now, in search of human life, we seek craggly imperfections as a signal for a real brain and beating heart.
Tags: New York Times, quiz, writing
2026-03-10 17:14:23
Pokemon is in its 30th year of existence. The Straits Times visualized the origins of each character in network form:
In this tree of life, The Straits Times examines each Pokemon character’s closest proxies in the real world, uncovering the scientific concepts hidden in their designs. Beyond the original species, we delve into creatures from different dimensions and eras that were introduced in later versions of the game.
They also tell the history of the game, links to real-world science, and its worldwide popularity.
I know next to nothing about Pokemon, so this piece helped me better appreciate what the kids are talking about. It turns out there’s a bit more to it than just catching them all.
Tags: Pokemon, Straits Times
