This is getting to the antivirus bundle level of adding pointless features. I want grammarly to... check my grammar. I don't want it to write for me or suggest things.
egorfine 101 days ago [-]
> I want grammarly to... check my grammar
That's not how it works today.
No sepulcator company gets profitable by shipping just a sepulcator. A sepulcator absolutely must have AI, monthly subscription, cloud services and - up until recently - has to be blockchain-based.
Ah, my bad, it's written with "k" and somehow I misspelled
some_guy_nobel 99 days ago [-]
There's an edit button...
egorfine 99 days ago [-]
Too late
VTimofeenko 101 days ago [-]
It's a prominent element of the civilization of Ardrites from the planet of Enteropia; see "Sepulkaria"
egorfine 101 days ago [-]
Doesn't matter. No VC is going to invest in it unless it has AI.
nwhnwh 100 days ago [-]
What a trash world we live in.
bigstrat2003 100 days ago [-]
Yet another demonstration that if you care at all about building a good business, don't accept VC money no matter what.
bitwize 100 days ago [-]
It's a thing that needs a turbo encabulator in order to function.
teddyh 101 days ago [-]
A thingamajig.
throwpoaster 101 days ago [-]
A widget.
chemotaxis 101 days ago [-]
Perhaps you do, but I think this misses the point. For-profit writing is the most successful use case for LLMs today. A significant proportion of all the docs I see at work reek of LLMs. A fair amount of articles you read in the media are written by LLMs. Lawyers use it for legal briefs (sometimes with comical results). Doctors use it for patient notes.
Basically, a significant portion of the population doesn't like writing or isn't good at it and really wants a "get it done" button. I might not love it, but the market is there.
So Grammarly is addressing a very real need. Further, it's really the only way for them to stay relevant, because you're getting AI editing / writing features in Gmail, Docs, Office 365, etc.
gbalduzzi 101 days ago [-]
> because you're getting AI editing / writing features in Gmail, Docs, Office 365, etc.
To me it is exactly why this move doesn't make sense.
Why would I use Grammarly/Superhuman for writing with LLM assistance, when I have an out-of-box alternative that, at worst, is equal?
They can't even compete with pricing, because they need to use their competitor models
chemotaxis 101 days ago [-]
> Why would I use Grammarly/Superhuman for writing with LLM assistance, when I have an out-of-box alternative that, at worst, is equal?
I think the answer is basically that they have brand recognition and they're trying to ride it. Right now, they have two bad choices: become irrelevant more quickly by having a product that's inferior to built-in LLM tools, or become irrelevant more slowly by having a tool that's comparable (and also works anywhere on the internet, not just on specific websites).
viscanti 101 days ago [-]
Brand recognition that they're throwing away with a rebrand.
toomuchtodo 101 days ago [-]
> So Grammarly is addressing a very real need. Further, it's really the only way for them to stay relevant, because you're getting AI editing / writing features in Gmail, Docs, Office 365, etc.
They are a feature, not a company, with my apologies to Jobs. To your point, software and tools with native writing functionality can incorporate their own LLM support, as can native apps on mobile and desktop. Anything local will eventually be on device imho as model efficiency improves, or perhaps in browser (if not making API calls).
ghaff 101 days ago [-]
Flagging likely spelling and basic grammar errors are pretty much incorporated into most word processors at this point. I may or may not choose to ignore them. But they work pretty well and I'm unlikely to use an external tool.
I did write for a while for a tech site that had some Wordpress add-on that was oriented to making my writing, I guess, more friendly to an 8th grade level. I ignored it.
Ekaros 100 days ago [-]
I mostly just rely on browser to check my spelling. In work well copy paste it to World if I really want to get fancy... I did years ago use Grammarly for my thesis and spam finally ended after years some time ago...
ghaff 100 days ago [-]
You're right that it's mostly just the browser. Other than one or two text editors, I don't think I even have a word processor installed on a system at this point.
101 days ago [-]
ghaff 101 days ago [-]
Maybe it's just because I'm a reasonably decent writer but I used to know someone who was adamant about using Grammarly because it would increase traffic to my website--and I was basically "don't care."
ADDED: Because it would make the writing friendlier to more people.
100 days ago [-]
coffeebeqn 100 days ago [-]
I don’t know that “friendlier” is a good metric. AI slop is very friendly but off-putting. I’d rather hear someone’s real voice in their writing
ghaff 100 days ago [-]
I'm not sure what the right word is. At least according to the tool's output, it's about taking the writing down to a lower grade level.
I agree about the authentic voice. At one point, I got pretty unhappy with a fairly junior editor's changes to something I wrote. I was just going to let it go but my manager took it up with the editor's manager in the vein of "this isn't acceptable."
Mistletoe 101 days ago [-]
My Anker earbuds have a new update adding AI. :P
torginus 101 days ago [-]
Too bad, management wants you to train this shitty chatbot they plan to replace you with
TheRealNGenius 101 days ago [-]
[dead]
treetalker 101 days ago [-]
Just as everything tends to evolve into something resembling a crab, all software seems to eventually become email — and, now, an LLM.
Brajeshwar 101 days ago [-]
“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.” — Zawinski’s Law
I'm also a fan of "Every B2B SaaS attempts to expand until it it's an ERP."
array_key_first 100 days ago [-]
Ah, this explains why Spotify has a messenger now.
deaux 100 days ago [-]
I'm sure they're working on an algorithmic infinite scroll video feed as we speak.
Ekaros 100 days ago [-]
Are music videos a thing still? I think that might work... Not that I have any idea about music videos or music or infinite scroll video feeds...
djmips 100 days ago [-]
i mean videos were constantly popping up for me on mobile Spotify so it kind of had already started happening. I had to actually investigate how to turn it off.
kotaKat 100 days ago [-]
Still no AirPlay 2 support, though!
fouc 99 days ago [-]
“Any sufficiently complicated concurrent program in another language contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden implementation of half of Erlang.” — Robert Virding
treetalker 101 days ago [-]
Thanks, I was slightly off!
MajimasEyepatch 101 days ago [-]
To be fair, productivity and writing tools are a better fit for LLMs than a lot of other use cases.
treetalker 101 days ago [-]
Responding to you and fullshark, I'm not criticizing, only observing. Just as there is some evolutionary pressure causing carcinization, it's interesting to consider what pressure pushes things in the directions of email and LLMs.
I don't know what it is, but would love to hear others' ideas.
wredcoll 101 days ago [-]
I think "email" is a bit of a overly specific term, but if we take a small step back, communicating with other humans is usually the most important part of any piece of software.
lm28469 101 days ago [-]
I have a feeling these things will spend 99% of their processing time reading other LLMs outputs.
Resumes written by LLMs and read by LLMs
PR summaries written by LLMs and read by LLMs
Emails written by LLMs and read by LLMs
...
Everything could just be a few bullet points... these things were already 90% posturing and trying to sound fancy by using convoluted sentences and big words, now that it's been automated what's the point
Harper is a nice alternative, but it's still rough around the edges.
For instance, if you have a misspelled word, and the correction options come up, you can't get out of them and return to where you were by using the keyboard. You can hit Escape to close them, but it doesn't restore your place in the text field, so you have to use your mouse to get back where you were.
As a programmer who tries to use the keyboard as much as possible, this (incredibly easy to fix, I'm sure) bug drives me crazy! Almost enough to make me go back to Grammarly.
embedding-shape 101 days ago [-]
That seems to me not like a "rough around the edges" thing but "most basic, table-stakes feature". If you cannot resume typing after either cancelling a correction, or doing a correction, I'd say it is very broken and not ready to be marketed as a functioning tool. I mean, it's supposed to help you write, not make it more cumbersome.
saint_yossarian 101 days ago [-]
I thought Harper is an LSP, so this sounds more like an integration issue with whatever editor you're using it with.
jerrygoyal 100 days ago [-]
For those who find red squiggly lines too distracting, I built a lightweight Chrome extension (<1MB) that approaches grammar correction in a minimalistic way: Highlight text -> Select "Correct grammar" from the toolbar -> Replace text.
The quality is unmatched because it uses SOTA models like GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini.
A great tool if you want your own unique voice to blend seamlessly into the tidal wave of LLM-generated mush flooding the internet.
emil-lp 100 days ago [-]
Grammarly is a powerful writing assistant that offers grammar, punctuation, and style suggestions to improve your writing. It’s an essential tool for maintaining your unique voice in a world filled with generic, LLM-generated content. With Grammarly, you can ensure your words stand out and resonate amidst the noise.
saaaaaam 100 days ago [-]
At the risk of seeming glib, is this AI? Or is it satire?
terribleperson 99 days ago [-]
I think it's satire. Possibly satirical use of AI.
port11 101 days ago [-]
I really like your comment. Of course all the LLM-generated content really is for other LLMs to read/scrape.
haltingproblem 101 days ago [-]
"Grammarly announced Tuesday the acquisition of email client Superhuman in a push to build out its AI for its productivity suite. Neither companies provided details about the financial terms of the deal..... Superhuman was founded by Rahul Vohra, Vivek Sodera, and Conrad Irwin. The company raised more than $114 million in funding from backers including a16z, IVP, and Tiger Global, with its last valuation at $825 million, according to data from venture data analytics firm Traxcn." [1]
Interested to understand what would be the terms of the deal if Superhuman was valued at $825mm and what the founders cleared if the all the VCs rounds had 2-3x liquidation preferences.
The name Superhuman makes a lot more sense for a company with a suite of AI productivity products. The "Grammarly" name was too focused on their original use case of just improving writing.
0cf8612b2e1e 101 days ago [-]
It is a good product name. I can almost imagine an unimaginably rich AI company buying it just for the name.
ljlolel 101 days ago [-]
Grammarly bought Superhuman and it’s already a public company
wferrell 101 days ago [-]
Not a public company.
ljlolel 101 days ago [-]
Ah my mistake
cardanome 101 days ago [-]
"Superhuman" gives me the creeps as a German.
I know it has a positive connotation with super heroes in US culture but for me it sounds like Übermensch. Especially as it is the direct opposite of "subhuman".
Plus outside of tech bro circles, people either actively hate generative AI or are at least super annoyed by the over-hype of it. Duolingo went all in on AI and got a huge shitstorm.
Branding your company on a current hype that might either burst soon or/and leave lots of people unemployed is maybe not a wise decisions.
JohnFen 101 days ago [-]
> I know it has a positive connotation with super heroes in US culture
I'm not sure about this. I'm a US citizen, but it absolutely does not have positive connotations to me at all. It has very negative ones.
umanwizard 101 days ago [-]
Are you a native English speaker? I can't think of a scenario where "superhuman" has negative connotations in American English. When we say someone has superhuman skill, or speed, or strength, it is always a positive thing.
JohnFen 101 days ago [-]
> Are you a native English speaker?
Yes, I am. Born and raised in the US.
There are instances where the term is used in a positive sense, yes, but those are limited in scope. "Superhuman strength" rather than just "superhuman".
"Superhuman" on its own is a term that has long been tightly associated with a wide variety of horrible things. Eugenics, for example.
umanwizard 101 days ago [-]
I honestly think most American English speakers are not thinking about eugenics when they hear that term. I believe you when you say that it has those connotations for you but I think you are in a small minority.
jazzyjackson 100 days ago [-]
I like superhuman as an adjective, it implies some quality of a man is superhuman, but a superhuman as a standalone item is very frightening as it spells obsolescence for the rest of us ( I guess this is the plot of X-Men )
nxor 100 days ago [-]
Without a doubt
f4uCL9dNSnQm 100 days ago [-]
I had exact same issues with "Uber".
antiloper 101 days ago [-]
"Superhuman" is just "Superman" but without getting sued by DC comics.
embedding-shape 101 days ago [-]
And with the additional small hint of Nazism for Europeans. But otherwise exactly the same more or less :)
antiloper 101 days ago [-]
Nope. You must be thinking of the terms "Untermensch" (used a lot by Nazis) and "Übermensch" (introduced by Nietzsche, and rarely used by Nazis). "Supermensch" was never used at all.
schrijver 100 days ago [-]
What do you think ‘super’ means ? It is latin for ‘over’, wich in German is über. In English it has come to take on a broader meaning, but Nietzsche’s übermensch is called ‘superman’ in most English translations, even if ‘superhuman’ would be more accurate.
GP doesn’t imply Nazis used ‘Supermensch’, just that the ‘superhuman’ translates to übermensch and that the branding might evoke this concept for European ears.
embedding-shape 101 days ago [-]
Growing up in the 90s in Sweden, we definitively were taught that "Übermensch" ("Övermänniska" in Swedish, literally "Above Human") was something the Nazis promoted during their time, together with demoting "Untermensch". Maybe that's wrong, and if so I thank you for the correction, but "Superhuman" does give me similar vibes regardless, not because of the exact wording, but because of the ideas/concepts.
leobg 101 days ago [-]
Nietzsche’s sister tried to garner favor with the Nazi regime. After Nietzsche’s death, she took his notes, published them under the title “Will to Power” and made it all sound as though Hitler was the fulfillment of Nietzschean ideas. Even scholars who built their careers on Nietzschean philosophy fell for this. For example Ayn Rand. So your teachers were in good company. In truth, everything about the Nazis would have made Nietzsche sick to his stomach: group-think, racism, big government, socialism, robbery, personality cult, lack of intellect, mass appeal, Gleichschaltung, militarism.
cess11 100 days ago [-]
Elisabeth and Bernhard were rabid nationalists and antisemites long before the NSDAP. They established their vegetarian-antisemitic-'Aryan' colony in Paraguay in 1887, two years before Adolf Hitler was born.
It failed for financial reasons and the rather harsh environment. They ditched the vegetarianism and started selling meat to get some money, spiraling into alcohol and morphine abuse. In 1889 Bernhard killed himself with strychnine, after which Elisabeth started her career as a fake chronicler by writing a book aimed at creating a much nicer and 'Aryan' image of Bernhard and the colony than the truth would have allowed.
As you allude to, Friedrich Nietzsche poured buckets and buckets of abuse over people like his sister and other german nationalists, refusing for the entirety of his life to identify as german, and towards the end of his life he even claimed to be a polish nobleman, free of the tainted blood of the germans.
nilamo 101 days ago [-]
[flagged]
umanwizard 101 days ago [-]
Why would Germans be an authority on what words should or shouldn't be used in English?
This is sort of a reverse version of the very common trend of American political correctness / sensitivity language being exported around the world. Our ancestors committed heinous crimes, therefore we get to tell you how to speak, even though you had nothing to do with it.
integralid 101 days ago [-]
A German person just said that it gives them nazi viber, nothing about English words that should be used.
Person above argues that the words are different therefore such connection can't be made which is just... wrong because they reply in a thread where someone literally said they made that connection.
In short, we're explicitly talking about what Europeans see (me too, I'm not German), not what Americans should do.
umanwizard 101 days ago [-]
> nothing about English words that should be used
The comment I'm replying to says, verbatim, "hey maybe this specific word shouldn't be used" (as a paraphrase of that commenter's understanding of the argument being made by the German). That is what I'm responding to.
nilamo 101 days ago [-]
I guess I don't see what the problem is?
If someone says a particular word or phrase is problematic for them, no one can tell them they're wrong. You cannot dictate how other people respond to language, and it's really weird to see people trying to do that.
umanwizard 101 days ago [-]
Sure, I can't tell them they're "wrong", i.e. I think the self-reported subjective feeling is probably accurate.
What I object to is the implication that Americans should punish themselves by refraining from using normal words in their own language because Germans feel bad about something Germans did.
kelipso 100 days ago [-]
The implication is that if they want to market to Europeans (which I'm sure they do), they probably shouldn't use that word. I agree Americans see it in a positive light, including me, though I find superhuman generic to the point of background noise.
mytailorisrich 101 days ago [-]
Because Ubermensch comes from Nietzche a century before the Nazis, as said, and had also a big influence on anarchists. No-one suggested that "Superhuman" shouldn't be used, either. A some point people need to put things in context and not "get the creeps" over any little things. I am sure that Germans don't even notice all those "Volkswagen" around them...
cess11 100 days ago [-]
Nietzsche introduced the concept in Also Sprach Zarathustra, published in 1883.
not-embedding 101 days ago [-]
maybe given their history of literally accepting Hitler, Germans shouldn't be the ones policing what words can be used?
embedding-shape 101 days ago [-]
Given everyone's history, someone somewhere has accepted evil in every country, so no one should police what words mean?
not-embedding 100 days ago [-]
I'd say stay away from policing at least one's own evils. People that are idiotic enough to connect the superhuman in this context to Naziism should stay away from policing any meanings (but now I'm guilty of policing what people should police)
balaz 101 days ago [-]
Yes, the idea of the death of God also gives me shivers.
dude250711 101 days ago [-]
'Superhuman' sales representative: "Then you might be interested in our new Deus Ex package".
umanwizard 101 days ago [-]
You cannot expect other countries to stop using normal words because they remind you of the bad things your country did.
Shame for what Germany did during the Nazi regime is something for Germans to bear, not Americans. We are not at fault for that, and we have no obligation to change our own culture to accommodate your guilt.
urbandw311er 100 days ago [-]
That’s quite a leap. The parent commenter didn’t call for them to withdraw the branding, they were just sharing something interesting and unique about their perspective as a German.
cardanome 100 days ago [-]
Just to be clear, I never said that the word should be banned.
I am not sure how important the German or general European market is so hard to say whether it even should be a consideration for Grammarly.
That said the ideas of some people being intrinsically better than other people isn't specific to Germany. Eugenics used to be popular in many countries including the US. It is very advisable for other countries to learn from German history so our mistakes are not repeated.
suddenlybananas 100 days ago [-]
>I am not sure how important the German or general European market
I'm sure a large population of second language English speakers is a huge market for grammarly, no?
libraryatnight 100 days ago [-]
It seems off-putting and absurd to me. Especially given the result is neither super nor human.
triceratops 101 days ago [-]
I thought Grammarly's brand was far better known than "Superhuman". I've never seen a YouTube ad for the latter.
Yizahi 101 days ago [-]
Imagine searching web or any system really for "superhuman". Grammarly will be buried ten pages deep under other results.
chemotaxis 101 days ago [-]
It won't be. Similarly, searching for "x" on Google returns Twitter as the first hit.
Search results are optimized based on inferred intent, and the intent of most people searching for "superhuman" will be the Grammarly app.
array_key_first 100 days ago [-]
X is still a stupid brand name and I refuse to believe anyone who works in marketing would ever come up with that.
santiagobasulto 100 days ago [-]
They rebranded but the pricing and packaging options are still stupid and poorly segmenting the product. Basically, there's still a different (and higher) price to get email or not.
On top of that, Grammarly's 3 products (Coda, Go and Grammarly itself) all look the same. What are honestly the differences between these three:
* Product 1: Everyone’s favorite AI writing partner.
* Product 2: The all-in-one AI workspace for teams
* Product 3: AI that works in every app you use
These people probably know what they're doing, and probably also have a lot of restrictions from previous users so migrating is hard. But I'd unify the value prop, just one product: AI Superpowers, including all the "features": Email, writing assistant etc.
And then the packaging done per Enterprise features and metered.
diegof79 101 days ago [-]
Given their extensive expertise in browser and OS plugins, I understand this move.
You can foresee a challenging future for the Grammarly product for a long time. Now that the "improve writing with AI" feature is everywhere, there are fewer reasons to pay for their subscription (e.g., I didn't renew this year because I have multiple AI subscriptions, and Grammarly was the least critical of them).
However, for me, the main advantage of Grammarly was the user experience of having mistakes and suggestions inline and just a click away while editing, as well as the quality of the suggestions (with an LLM chat, there's a lot of trial and error and junk you need to filter out).
I understand their move, but I wish they had developed a good minimalist native text editor with the same Grammarly suggestions and click-to-correct interface.
charlie0 101 days ago [-]
That is my number one issue with startups. They all start minimalist and end up bloated, some sooner than others, and what made them great disappears behind all this bloat. See: tyranny of the marginal user.
__mharrison__ 100 days ago [-]
I've been a long time use of Grammarly. I have used it for most of my books. I have a 150 week long streak using it. I've used it as an example of good ux for AI.
Now I'm considering vibe coding a replacement that just does grammar fixing...
Ironic, because I don't want the AI writing, only the grammar checking
coffeebeqn 100 days ago [-]
I’m guessing their moat is pretty much gone. Not too surprised they’re pivoting
The company is being rebranded, not the product. Makes total sense, considering the brand equity, and also them going in the direction of productivity suite. Could be interesting.
gaws 101 days ago [-]
Stop using Grammarly. There are better options available that don't exist just to collect your data to sell it to the highest bidder or feed it into an LLM.
andai 101 days ago [-]
Superhuman is such a funny name. It implies the Red Squiggles feature was the beginning of man-machine symbiosis...
villgax 100 days ago [-]
This stuff happens all the time for a tech blog they sure don’t know the industry.
Google acquired Flutter, a desktop app which let you control your music playback with hand gestures, only to reuse the branding for the yet another ghost town framework of theirs.
Yizahi 101 days ago [-]
Supercringe
superbowl 101 days ago [-]
Moving to "AI" and away from a well-known brand smacks of desperation. Makes me wonder if the industry-wide trend of shoving AI into every product and feature, and channelling all investment into AI, is equally desperate.
Strange that they didn't create a new name. Could it be that that was a deal breaker for Superhuman company and Grammarly wanted the deal so much?
f4uCL9dNSnQm 100 days ago [-]
This has to be equivalent of "Long Island Iced Tea Corp" renaming to "Long Blockchain Corp."
biophysboy 101 days ago [-]
I get that software companies are rebranding products with superhero/god terminology to increase their perceived value and raise margin, but its not working for me because they are losing product differentiation. Why would I choose this app among the dozens of other tech products that promise godlike AI capabilities?
Havoc 100 days ago [-]
Ouch. They had perfectly fine - even great - branding and they went with something ambiguous like that?
adamzwasserman 100 days ago [-]
grammerly is a particularly intrusive TSR (showing my age here). So much so, that even though I like it, I will not run it.
Superhuman's entire value proposition was "staying out of my way".
All I can do is hope that the latter rubs off on the former, and notthe otehr way around.
thw_9a83c 101 days ago [-]
One day, we will see a demand for services that are the opposite of "Superhuman". For example, a service like: "Deteriorate this text and make it look weirdly human. Add some typos and errors here and there, so that the final output looks 100% human-written."
coffeebeqn 101 days ago [-]
The end state job for all the laid off office workers. A man can dream
cess11 100 days ago [-]
After reading this article I'm still wondering whether they're claiming to be the Übermensch or tailoring their services for them.
Either way, I'm not so sure spellchecking and the Superman has the kind of connection that would make for efficient branding.
chatmasta 101 days ago [-]
Grammarly is a keylogger. It’s astounding any enterprise allows it to run on their endpoints.
jazzyjackson 100 days ago [-]
And Microsoft has access to everything written in every word doc and excel spreadsheet and every email
Most people apparently don't care
yoyohello13 101 days ago [-]
Even if we haven't hit the LLM ceiling, we've hit a ceiling on branding for sure. I'm interested to see where these names go next. Uberbeing! Omnipotence Plugin!
dude250711 101 days ago [-]
The society is not yet ready to discuss branding ecology. Nice names are a finite resource.
not4uffin 100 days ago [-]
I don’t like it, but I’m not surprised a writing tool got invaded with LLM features.
egorfine 101 days ago [-]
I absolutely hate it when companies rename themselves. I know a company called an extremely stupid name by its young founder and they did not rename for decades and are now worth a bit short of $4T.
Why do the smaller ones constantly need to change their name. Like that changes anything in their substance.
janpio 101 days ago [-]
Data point 1: They get a TechCrunch post out of it.
egorfine 100 days ago [-]
Grammarly is certainly not at the level where TechCrunch post makes all the difference
aetherspawn 101 days ago [-]
AIs are pretty bad at rewriting, they always pick gimmickey marketing words. I always thought of Grammarly as a premium entry into that segment for proper professional writing. Shame it’s going the way of slop.
101 days ago [-]
101 days ago [-]
wahnfrieden 101 days ago [-]
They are paying UGC creators $10 per 1000 views. Ambitious.
animitronix 99 days ago [-]
Except there's already a "Superhuman" product on the market. Did they do zero research on a new name? What a blunder
ajkjk 100 days ago [-]
Great now I will have to keep hearing about their new stupid name instead
t0lo 99 days ago [-]
This is horrifically idiotic rebrand- yet another example of optimising for ai at the cost of optimising for everything else
JEFFREYBURKE 101 days ago [-]
[dead]
onetokeoverthe 100 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 10:57:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
That's not how it works today.
No sepulcator company gets profitable by shipping just a sepulcator. A sepulcator absolutely must have AI, monthly subscription, cloud services and - up until recently - has to be blockchain-based.
Basically, a significant portion of the population doesn't like writing or isn't good at it and really wants a "get it done" button. I might not love it, but the market is there.
So Grammarly is addressing a very real need. Further, it's really the only way for them to stay relevant, because you're getting AI editing / writing features in Gmail, Docs, Office 365, etc.
To me it is exactly why this move doesn't make sense.
Why would I use Grammarly/Superhuman for writing with LLM assistance, when I have an out-of-box alternative that, at worst, is equal?
They can't even compete with pricing, because they need to use their competitor models
I think the answer is basically that they have brand recognition and they're trying to ride it. Right now, they have two bad choices: become irrelevant more quickly by having a product that's inferior to built-in LLM tools, or become irrelevant more slowly by having a tool that's comparable (and also works anywhere on the internet, not just on specific websites).
They are a feature, not a company, with my apologies to Jobs. To your point, software and tools with native writing functionality can incorporate their own LLM support, as can native apps on mobile and desktop. Anything local will eventually be on device imho as model efficiency improves, or perhaps in browser (if not making API calls).
I did write for a while for a tech site that had some Wordpress add-on that was oriented to making my writing, I guess, more friendly to an 8th grade level. I ignored it.
ADDED: Because it would make the writing friendlier to more people.
I agree about the authentic voice. At one point, I got pretty unhappy with a fairly junior editor's changes to something I wrote. I was just going to let it go but my manager took it up with the editor's manager in the vein of "this isn't acceptable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
I don't know what it is, but would love to hear others' ideas.
Resumes written by LLMs and read by LLMs
PR summaries written by LLMs and read by LLMs
Emails written by LLMs and read by LLMs
...
Everything could just be a few bullet points... these things were already 90% posturing and trying to sound fancy by using convoluted sentences and big words, now that it's been automated what's the point
For instance, if you have a misspelled word, and the correction options come up, you can't get out of them and return to where you were by using the keyboard. You can hit Escape to close them, but it doesn't restore your place in the text field, so you have to use your mouse to get back where you were.
As a programmer who tries to use the keyboard as much as possible, this (incredibly easy to fix, I'm sure) bug drives me crazy! Almost enough to make me go back to Grammarly.
The quality is unmatched because it uses SOTA models like GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini.
Yes, you can use your own API key as well.
https://jetwriter.ai
Interested to understand what would be the terms of the deal if Superhuman was valued at $825mm and what the founders cleared if the all the VCs rounds had 2-3x liquidation preferences.
edit: added source
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/grammarly-acquires-ai-emai...
I know it has a positive connotation with super heroes in US culture but for me it sounds like Übermensch. Especially as it is the direct opposite of "subhuman".
Plus outside of tech bro circles, people either actively hate generative AI or are at least super annoyed by the over-hype of it. Duolingo went all in on AI and got a huge shitstorm.
Branding your company on a current hype that might either burst soon or/and leave lots of people unemployed is maybe not a wise decisions.
I'm not sure about this. I'm a US citizen, but it absolutely does not have positive connotations to me at all. It has very negative ones.
Yes, I am. Born and raised in the US.
There are instances where the term is used in a positive sense, yes, but those are limited in scope. "Superhuman strength" rather than just "superhuman".
"Superhuman" on its own is a term that has long been tightly associated with a wide variety of horrible things. Eugenics, for example.
GP doesn’t imply Nazis used ‘Supermensch’, just that the ‘superhuman’ translates to übermensch and that the branding might evoke this concept for European ears.
It failed for financial reasons and the rather harsh environment. They ditched the vegetarianism and started selling meat to get some money, spiraling into alcohol and morphine abuse. In 1889 Bernhard killed himself with strychnine, after which Elisabeth started her career as a fake chronicler by writing a book aimed at creating a much nicer and 'Aryan' image of Bernhard and the colony than the truth would have allowed.
As you allude to, Friedrich Nietzsche poured buckets and buckets of abuse over people like his sister and other german nationalists, refusing for the entirety of his life to identify as german, and towards the end of his life he even claimed to be a polish nobleman, free of the tainted blood of the germans.
This is sort of a reverse version of the very common trend of American political correctness / sensitivity language being exported around the world. Our ancestors committed heinous crimes, therefore we get to tell you how to speak, even though you had nothing to do with it.
Person above argues that the words are different therefore such connection can't be made which is just... wrong because they reply in a thread where someone literally said they made that connection.
In short, we're explicitly talking about what Europeans see (me too, I'm not German), not what Americans should do.
The comment I'm replying to says, verbatim, "hey maybe this specific word shouldn't be used" (as a paraphrase of that commenter's understanding of the argument being made by the German). That is what I'm responding to.
If someone says a particular word or phrase is problematic for them, no one can tell them they're wrong. You cannot dictate how other people respond to language, and it's really weird to see people trying to do that.
What I object to is the implication that Americans should punish themselves by refraining from using normal words in their own language because Germans feel bad about something Germans did.
Shame for what Germany did during the Nazi regime is something for Germans to bear, not Americans. We are not at fault for that, and we have no obligation to change our own culture to accommodate your guilt.
I am not sure how important the German or general European market is so hard to say whether it even should be a consideration for Grammarly.
That said the ideas of some people being intrinsically better than other people isn't specific to Germany. Eugenics used to be popular in many countries including the US. It is very advisable for other countries to learn from German history so our mistakes are not repeated.
I'm sure a large population of second language English speakers is a huge market for grammarly, no?
Search results are optimized based on inferred intent, and the intent of most people searching for "superhuman" will be the Grammarly app.
On top of that, Grammarly's 3 products (Coda, Go and Grammarly itself) all look the same. What are honestly the differences between these three:
These people probably know what they're doing, and probably also have a lot of restrictions from previous users so migrating is hard. But I'd unify the value prop, just one product: AI Superpowers, including all the "features": Email, writing assistant etc.And then the packaging done per Enterprise features and metered.
You can foresee a challenging future for the Grammarly product for a long time. Now that the "improve writing with AI" feature is everywhere, there are fewer reasons to pay for their subscription (e.g., I didn't renew this year because I have multiple AI subscriptions, and Grammarly was the least critical of them).
However, for me, the main advantage of Grammarly was the user experience of having mistakes and suggestions inline and just a click away while editing, as well as the quality of the suggestions (with an LLM chat, there's a lot of trial and error and junk you need to filter out).
I understand their move, but I wish they had developed a good minimalist native text editor with the same Grammarly suggestions and click-to-correct interface.
Now I'm considering vibe coding a replacement that just does grammar fixing...
Ironic, because I don't want the AI writing, only the grammar checking
Google acquired Flutter, a desktop app which let you control your music playback with hand gestures, only to reuse the branding for the yet another ghost town framework of theirs.
Superhuman's entire value proposition was "staying out of my way".
All I can do is hope that the latter rubs off on the former, and notthe otehr way around.
Either way, I'm not so sure spellchecking and the Superman has the kind of connection that would make for efficient branding.
Most people apparently don't care
Why do the smaller ones constantly need to change their name. Like that changes anything in their substance.