Like many other writers, Grammarly has been my go-to tool for proofreading my articles. It caught my typos, misplaced commas, and grammar errors. I trusted Grammarly’s feedback, thinking it was helping me polish my writing. But lately, I realized the new version of Grammarly is doing something entirely different, which I didn’t sign up for. In the quest for clarity and perfection, Grammarly was trying to pull off that personal, human touch in my writings. What once felt like a reliable grammar checker has now turned into an aggressive AI tool always trying to erase my individuality.
Grammarly’s initial promise for writers
A simple tool that worked great
Grammarly was launched in 2009 with a simple and novel idea to help people write better. Initially, it wasn’t trying to automate writing or take over the creativity process. Rather, it used to be a capable proofreader that checked grammar, punctuation, and spelling, using rule-based algorithms. Over time, Grammarly was refined to offer sophisticated suggestions on tone detection and text clarity. Around 2015, Grammarly gained a lot of popularity and became an indispensable tool for many students, writers, and professionals.
You could find it literally everywhere, like browser extensions, integration in Google Docs, Word, and every text editor. This allows users to quickly draft an important email or fine-tune an article, having the confidence that Grammarly will catch even the slightest mistakes, such as a missed comma or an extra adjective.
I started using Grammarly in 2019 as a basic grammar and spell checker to save myself from embarrassing typos while writing emails and drafting my articles. The extension secured a permanent spot in my web browser, my email, and every text editor. Grammarly boosted my confidence with every keystroke, making me feel that it’s actually helping me write better. I could see where I was wrong and how Grammarly improved me.
However, everything changed when Grammarly took a U-turn from its initial promise to help writers. In 2023, the company launched a generative AI feature, GrammarlyGo, that claims to enhance writing assistance. The company lost its way and started a different journey to become a full-fledged AI powerhouse.
Why Grammarly lost the plot for me
Transition from writing assistant to creativity killer
Remember the buzz when ChatGPT was launched? Everyone was talking about how ChatGPT would replace their jobs. Writers, coders, and software engineers were badly affected at that time. After a few months, people (and even the Google algorithm) realized that ChatGPT can’t write like a human. If you’ve ever used it to write something, you would know how robotic, generic, and hollow it sounds. Plus, it doesn’t reflect true voice and personal experiences. And that’s the same as what Grammarly started doing.
Rather than just checking the grammar and spelling, Grammarly now tries to take over your complete writing. It no longer feels like a writing assistant. For me, it’s an AI fluff marketed as intelligent assistance. It tries to jump over with aggressive word choices and tone adjustments, which aren’t always up to the mark. Also, many of its corrections don’t fit in with my writing. When I would try to replace a single word, Grammarly would automatically rewrite the full sentence, which sounds mechanical and extremely flat.
With its unwanted passion to make everything sound more polished, Grammarly was taking away the true personality and voice of my writing. Even worse, it completely killed my creativity. Right from the rhythm of my article to small details that reflected my uniqueness, everything was affected due to Grammarly’s formulaic style.
The Superhuman rebrand no one asked for
What this means for writers
On October 29, Grammarly announced its transition to Superhuman, a unified tool with Grammarly, Superhuman Mail, and Coda capabilities. It introduces a new flagship AI-assistant, SuperHuman Go, which works across various tabs and can fetch content from 100+ applications like email, calendar, reminders, and documents. Beyond writing assistance, this tool can schedule your meetings, draft emails, and do a lot more. While some people may find this exciting, writers won’t feel the same way.
By transitioning to Superhuman, Grammarly has shifted its focus entirely, from a humble grammar tool to a full-blown AI-based platform. Superhuman wants to manage your creative workflow, where it can predict, rephrase, and automate your writing. Basically, a simple tool that helped us write better now wants to replace our words altogether. With its ability to link over a hundred apps, Superhuman wants to mimic your tone, habits, and overall style. Grammarly may call it personalized guidance, but I see it as data extraction wrapped with convenience. If we writers rely on a heavily AI-integrated platform, it will kill the unique voice, individual style, and originality.
I strongly believe Grammarly’s new AI-laden approach isn’t for writers. It could be useful for marketing people, executives, and other professionals who want to boost their productivity.
Why every writer should care (and act)
Take back control
Word choices, rhythm, personal touch, and creativity make a writer unique. However, when your writings become training material for some AI tool, everything changes. Grammarly was supposed to check your words, but now it’s using them to train its models. It learns from millions of users and blends different styles. As a result, you get an AI-optimized text with no imperfections, and certainly no human touch. Would you call it writing assistance? Definitely not.
I didn’t realize how Grammarly was ruining my writing until I got a message from my editor saying, “Are you using AI for your articles?” I was shocked and worried, too. I replied, “No, I’ve never used AI for any of my writing.” Then we had a discussion about Grammarly and how it’s spoiling everything. I had a closer look at my writing and realized Grammarly was doing more harm in the name of good. My editor was kind enough to understand all of this. Right after that, I completely uninstalled Grammarly.
If you don’t want to put your writing career at stake, my friend, stop using Grammarly right away.
Quitting Grammarly is the best edit I’ve ever made
I’m glad I broke up with Grammarly before it was too late. Well, I parted ways because of my principles. As a writer, my dedication is towards original writing, and not optimized content. There’s no doubt that Grammarly is an AI powerhouse, but it’s definitely not meant for professional writers like us. If you want to write a good email or need help with homework, you may find Grammarly useful. For writers, it takes away originality and personality. When I uninstalled Grammarly, I got back my voice. My writings became a little messy, a little imperfect, but completely mine. And that’s something I truly value.
