The new feature, called GrammarlyGo, is set to be launched by Grammarly in April, and will allow users to brainstorm ideas, compose writing, edit and personalize text. This latest AI-powered tool will be automatically available across a range of apps and websites including Medium, LinkedIn, Microsoft Word, Gmail, and Google Docs.
The feature is built on OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language models, and will enable users to provide short prompts to create entire drafts of writing, convert bullet points to paragraphs, and give feedback and additional context to the tool to rewrite a piece of text based on a preferred tone and length. GrammarlyGo can also interpret the intent of an email, condense it into a single line, and propose options for email replies based on the context of previous emails.
The generative AI features will be available to Grammarly’s 30 million users through the browser extension initially, and will gradually be rolled out across 500,000 websites, desktop and mobile applications where Grammarly is available. Users will be able to access GrammarlyGo features on apps like Medium, LinkedIn, Gmail, and Google Docs.
Grammarly’s algorithm is trained on millions of grammatically correct sentences and inputs from users and their writing experiences, utilizing a mix of technologies such as deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, and language models to suggest corrections to people’s writing. However, instead of using their in-house technology, Grammarly has chosen to license OpenAI’s technology and integrate it with its existing technologies to move beyond the revision phase of writing to incorporate comprehension and creation abilities.
The announcement of the new feature comes after the success of ChatGPT, which went viral late last year and crossed 100 million users in January 2023. This has set off a generative AI frenzy, with several startups such as Autobound and Typeface emerging, and other companies like Meta, Tome, Salesforce, and Roblox investing in the technological advancements in language models.
Despite the growing interest and funding in generative AI, there are concerns about its potential misuse, with teachers worried about students using it as a shortcut to complete writing assignments. As a result, school districts across the country have blocked ChatGPT from school devices. However, with the rollout of Grammarly’s generative AI feature in April, school administrators will be able to decide whether they want to enable the feature on their school devices for students.
Grammarly was cofounded by Ukrainian-born entrepreneurs and billionaires Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko with the help of programmer and cofounder Dmytro Lider. In November 2021, the company raised $200 million and was valued at $13 billion, bringing its total venture capital funding raised to $400 million. Before Grammarly, Lytvyn and Shevchenko founded plagiarism detection tool MyDropBox, which was later acquired by edtech company Blackboard. Today, Grammarly also checks for plagiarism but does not check for content written by AI.
