Source: https://front-end.social/@fox/110846484782705013
Text in the screenshot from Grammarly says:
We develop data sets to train our algorithms so that we can improve the services we provide to customers like you. We have devoted significant time and resources to developing methods to ensure that these data sets are anonymized and de-identified.
To develop these data sets, we sample snippets of text at random, disassociate them from a user’s account, and then use a variety of different methods to strip the text of identifying information (such as identifiers, contact details, addresses, etc.). Only then do we use the snippets to train our algorithms-and the original text is deleted. In other words, we don’t store any text in a manner that can be associated with your account or used to identify you or anyone else.
We currently offer a feature that permits customers to opt out of this use for Grammarly Business teams of 500 users or more. Please let me know if you might be interested in a license of this size, and I’II forward your request to the corresponding team.
Think about this every time you or a project you contribute to is using Microsoft GitHub instead of an open source offering (or self-hosted) or folks contributing to your permissive-licensed project living elsewhere while using Microsoft GitHub Copilot. All your projects and that force-push history clean up now belong to the Microsoft-owned AI that sells itself back to the developers that wrote all the code it trained on—no compensation, no recognition.
Even as someone who declines all cookies where possible on every site, I have to ask. How do you think they are going to be able to improve their language based services without using language learning models or other algorithmic evaluation of user data?
I get that the combo of AI and privacy have huge consequences, and that grammarly’s opt-out limits are genuinely shit. But it seems like everyone is so scared of the concept of AI that we’re harming research on tools that can help us while the tools which hurt us are developed with no consequence, because they don’t bother with any transparency or announcement.
Not that I’m any fan of grammarly, I don’t use it. I think that might be self-evident though.
In case anyone is interested in an alternative, I personally use LanguageTool because it is open source and works very well.