Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me

Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me

From Decoder with Nilay Patel by The Verge

March 23, 2026 · 1h 16m

About this episode

Nilay Patel interviews Shishir Mehrotra about the controversy surrounding Grammarly's use of AI-cloned identities without permission.

Today, I’m talking with Shishir Mehrotra, the CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, which is still its flagship product. Back in August, Grammarly shipped a feature called Expert Review, which allowed you to get writing suggestions from AI-cloned “experts,” and recently, reporters at The Verge and other outlets discovered that those experts included me, among many others. No one ever asked permission to use our names this way, and a lot of reporters were outraged by this. To Shishir’s credit, he did not cancel our interview and he came on and stuck it out. This conversation got tense at times, and it’s clear we disagree about how extractive AI feels for people. There’s a lot in this one, and I’m excited to hear what you think. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: Why I’m suing Grammarly | New York Times Grammarly will stop using identities without permission | The Verge Grammarly to keep using writer identities unless they opt out | The Verge Grammarly turned me into an AI editor and I hate it | Platformer Grammarly is using our identities without permission | The Verge Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman | The Verge Grammarly…

People in this episode

Guest: Shishir Mehrotra

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Mentioned in this episode

Products: Grammarly, Expert Review, Superhuman, Decoder

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