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Comment by chemotaxis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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