The Scoop: Grammarly CEO defends tool that cloned journalists in podcast interview — with host who was cloned

A couple weeks ago, Grammarly apologized for and disabled its Expert Review AI feature that mimicked prominent writers without their permission. The whole thing sparked a lawsuit.

Now, the company’s CEO Shishir Mehrotra is defending the idea behind the tool on The Verge podcast Decoder with journalist Nilay Patel. Patel is one of the writers Expert Review cloned. Bold move by Mehrotra.

During the conversation, Patel asks why Grammarly moved forward with the idea for Expert Review despite not having permission from these writers.

Mehrotra’s response: “For some of (Grammarly’s users), the people they want feedback from are the people they admire. It’s the experts in the world, it’s the people that they’re trying to look up to and trying to model…That was the inspiration behind it. The team and the feature didn’t deliver. It didn’t deliver on either side of it, really. We ended up with an experience that was pretty suboptimal for the user and obviously suboptimal to the expert.”

He then turned a corner, comparing Expert Review’s process to attribution.

“It’s really important to think about attribution and think about impersonation, and so on…When somebody uses your content, should they attribute you? Of course. And to attribute you, you have to use your name.”

From this, Patel questions Mehrotra about at what point he thinks writers should have been paid. There’s no clear response. He pushes again.

“The idea that the feature is impersonation is quite a big stretch.” Mehrotra said.

Patel asks again about payment. Mehrotra again dodges the question.

There’s also one small but important detail Mehrotra is missing. To have something attributed to you, you actually have to say it.

Why it matters: The core issue here is trust — and this approach undermines it on multiple levels. We’ll give Mehrotra props for not canceling the interview altogether, which Patel mentioned was scheduled a month ago, before the backlash and subsequent lawsuit. But the rest of his words are problematic.

When a leader admits something didn’t work very well but still defends the underlying behavior, it reads as missing the point.

The backlash wasn’t about the quality of what Expert Review was trying to do, it’s about ethics, consent and credibility. Mehrotra tries to explain it away with a discussion of attribution versus exploitation. Patel, who was personally impacted by this, makes it clear that isn’t good enough.

By focusing on its execution instead of taking full accountability, Mehrotra risks being seen as willing to create something similar again under different conditions.

That’s not a great look. In a crisis like this, stakeholders want to see clear lines from what went wrong, why it was wrong and how it won’t happen again. That’s missing here.

Instead, the messaging feels like a hedge, acknowledging failure while still justifying the thinking behind it. For a company built on helping people communicate clearly and authentically, this disconnect could be especially damaging.

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Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at [email protected].