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.
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.
> 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.
What's a sepulcator?
It is probably a reference to Stanislaw Lem's books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepulka
Ah, my bad, it's written with "k" and somehow I misspelled
There's an edit button...
Too late
Doesn't matter. No VC is going to invest in it unless it has AI.
What a trash world we live in.
Yet another demonstration that if you care at all about building a good business, don't accept VC money no matter what.
It's a prominent element of the civilization of Ardrites from the planet of Enteropia; see "Sepulkaria"
It's a thing that needs a turbo encabulator in order to function.
A thingamajig.
A widget.
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.
> 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
> 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).
Brand recognition that they're throwing away with a rebrand.
> 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).
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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."
My Anker earbuds have a new update adding AI. :P
Too bad, management wants you to train this shitty chatbot they plan to replace you with
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