Grammarly rebrands to 'Superhuman,' launches a new AI assistant
71 comments
·October 29, 2025faefox
port11
I really like your comment. Of course all the LLM-generated content really is for other LLMs to read/scrape.
jccalhoun
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
> 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.
codethief
What's a sepulcator?
egorfine
Doesn't matter. No VC is going to invest in it unless it has AI.
VTimofeenko
It's a prominent element of the civilization of Ardrites from the planet of Enteropia; see "Sepulkaria"
throwpoaster
A widget.
chemotaxis
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.
toomuchtodo
> 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).
gbalduzzi
> 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
> 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).
null
Mistletoe
My Anker earbuds have a new update adding AI. :P
torginus
Too bad, management wants you to train this shitty chatbot they plan to replace you with
TheRealNGenius
[dead]
zonged
Recently switched to Harper https://writewithharper.com/, a vastly superior grammar checker
hungryhobbit
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
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.
jhaile
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
It is a good product name. I can almost imagine an unimaginably rich AI company buying it just for the name.
cardanome
"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
> 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
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.
antiloper
"Superhuman" is just "Superman" but without getting sued by DC comics.
embedding-shape
And with the additional small hint of Nazism for Europeans. But otherwise exactly the same more or less :)
balaz
Yes, the idea of the death of God also gives me shivers.
dude250711
'Superhuman' sales representative: "Then you might be interested in our new Deus Ex package".
umanwizard
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.
treetalker
Just as everything tends to evolve into something resembling a crab, all software seems to eventually become email — and, now, an LLM.
Brajeshwar
“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
treetalker
Thanks, I was slightly off!
MajimasEyepatch
To be fair, productivity and writing tools are a better fit for LLMs than a lot of other use cases.
treetalker
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
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
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
fullshark
This company cannot afford to ignore LLMs.
diegof79
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
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.
triceratops
I thought Grammarly's brand was far better known than "Superhuman". I've never seen a YouTube ad for the latter.
Yizahi
Imagine searching web or any system really for "superhuman". Grammarly will be buried ten pages deep under other results.
chemotaxis
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.
thw_9a83c
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."
superbowl
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.
nkko
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.
biophysboy
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?
Yizahi
Supercringe
A great tool if you want your own unique voice to blend seamlessly into the tidal wave of LLM-generated mush flooding the internet.