• by Wendy Davis , March 12, 2026

Journalist Julia Angwin has sued Superhuman's Grammarly for allegedly misappropriating her identity -- along with the identities of hundreds of other writers -- for a paid service that claimed to critique consumers' writing by "applying ideas from" well-known authors.

"Contrary to the apparent belief of some tech companies, it is unlawful to appropriate peoples’ names and identities for commercial purposes, whether those people are famous or not," Angwin alleges in a class-action complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Grammary's $12-a-month "expert review" tool, which launched in August, allegedly told users it would read their text, find "experts" to review it, and then critique it by applying "ideas" from those experts -- including Angwin, best-selling writer Stephen King, journalist Kara Swisher, and former Federal Trade Commission member Julie Brill.

Angwin's complaint includes claims that the company violated laws in New York and California that restrict companies' ability to appropriate people's names and identities for commercial purposes.

Grammarly suspended the feature on Wednesday and apologized for "falling short."

"Over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices," CEO Shishir Mehrota said in a LinkedIn post. "We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this."

On Thursday, he said through a spokesperson that the tool had "very little usage" since its launch in August.

He also said the company has reviewed the complaint and believes the claims lack merit.

Angwin's complaint alleges that she learned of the "expert review" practices after reading journalist Casey Newton's March 9 Platformer report, "Grammarly turned me into an AI editor against my will and I hate it."

He wrote: "I’ve long assumed that before too long, AI might take my job. I just assumed that someone would tell me when it happened."

Angwin "was shocked and horrified that Grammarly had been appropriating her name and identity to provide comments and feedback to Grammarly’s users for profit without her consent, consultation, or input," the complaint alleges.

Angwin, who has reported extensively on data collection by the online ad industry, "was not only concerned that Grammarly’s use of her name and identity violated her privacy," but was also "concerned that this practice prevented her from controlling the commercial use of her name and identity and the work product the public associates with her name and identity," according to the complaint.

The suit comes as OpenAI, Anthropic and other artificial intelligence companies are facing numerous lawsuits, including by authors and news organizations. But those other cases differ from Angwin's in that they typically center on claims that the companies infringed copyright -- either by training chatbots on books or news articles, or by displaying passages of news articles and books to users in response to prompts.

Grammarly hasn't yet filed anything with the court in response to Angwin's complaint.