this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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The only way to avoid Grammarly using your data for AI is to pay for 500 accounts (yiffit.net)
submitted 2 years ago by soyagi@yiffit.net to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[–] Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com 141 points 2 years ago (12 children)

In case anyone is interested in an alternative, I personally use LanguageTool because it is open source and works very well.

[–] fcSolar@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Per their website premium includes "Unlimited sentence paraphrasing powered by A.I." so I'm not sure they're an appropriate alternative to avoid the "AI" bullshit.

[–] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

You can't avoid the AI "bullshit". It's like saying you want to avoid this portable phone craze. It's a tool.

[–] fcSolar@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago (8 children)

I can avoid it like I've avoided cryptocurrency and NFTs. And it may be a "tool," but it's one built on the theft from and unpaid labor of tens of thousands of independent creators, and is nigh wholly controlled by corporate interests bent on eliminating those same independent creators whose data they stole to make their "tools." It should not exist. Not until it can be made in an ethical manner without harming the creatives necessary to make it.

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[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm pretty sure most tools like this have to use ai to some degree to be more effective than something like Microsoft Word. I think the issue is more whether it's opt in or not to include your own data.

[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

Can confirm good drop in replacement. Also self hostable (to a point )

[–] relyn@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

I took a quick look at this and it seems that the server portion of this product is open source but the apps such as extensions are not. I'm not saying it's bad or even that it's a red flag. I just felt like I should point it out.

[–] thessnake03@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Does that have a chrome plugin?

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It even have a thunderbird plugin and works in all major editors.

You can self host it as well, which is how the editor plugins work by default.

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[–] michael@lemmy.perthchat.org 108 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yeah Grammarly was selling all your data LONG before the AI showed up.

Funny how some people are only nervous now that their data might be used to train a language model. I was always more worried about spooks! :)

[–] Poggervania@kbin.social 46 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Companies selling consumer data for profit and marketeering: i sleep

Companies using consumer data to train AI models:
R E A L S H I T

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

True. Companies sell our data to third parties since forever, but some people are worried about it being used to train machine learning models? I'm far more concerned by people using it than AI.

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[–] Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's because certain companies are stirring the pot and manipulating. They want people mad so they can put restrictions on training AI, to stifle the open source scene.

[–] cloaker@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

OpenAI moment

[–] RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They even named their company specifically to make it harder for open source ai to name themselves. Thats some dedication.

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[–] Crul@lemm.ee 88 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I see you posted this article to 4 communities. According to the comments on this post if you use the cross post function (in the default web frontend), it will only show once in the feeds instead of 4 times (which can be a bit annoying).

Thanks

EDIT: post link and aclaration regarding the UI

[–] soyagi@yiffit.net 83 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I did use the cross-post function. Most apps do not currently acknowledge this function which might explain why the article has appeared to you multiple times.

[–] Crul@lemm.ee 40 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks! It seems this issue is harder than I thought :)

[–] ComradePorkRoll@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What is this healthy communication?! Aren't you supposed to go into the "what the fuck did you just say to me" ramble?

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago

What the fuck did you just say to them?

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[–] library_napper@monyet.cc 25 points 2 years ago

How much do you have to pay for them to not monitor your every keystroke, including all your IP and passwords?

Oh, that's their business model, right.

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] harmonea@kbin.social 28 points 2 years ago (14 children)

Framing this solely as fear is extremely disingenuous. Speaking only for myself: I'm not against the development of AI or LLMs in general. I'm against the trained models being used for profit with no credit or cut given to the humans who trained it, willing or unwilling.

It's not even a matter of "if you aren't the paying customer, you're the product" - massive swaths of text used to train AIs were scraped without permission from sources whose platforms never sought to profit from users' submissions, like AO3. Until this is righted (which is likely never, I admit, because the LLM owners have no incentive whatsoever to change this behavior), I refuse to work with any site that intends to use my work to train LLMs.

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[–] Millie@lemm.ee 16 points 2 years ago

They're honestly doing you a favor. Grammarly is terrible. I've seen some of my friends whose first language isn't English use it to try to clean their grammar up and it makes some really weird, often totally mistaken choices. Usually they would have been better off leaving it as they wrote it.

[–] CrypticFawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wonder if ProWritingAid is doing the same now. I always preferred them over Grammarly.

[–] eochaid@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

They have a free tier and a $10/mo tier and prominently advertise their AI without any information about privacy. Guaranteed you and your text are the product being used to train their AI.

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Any scope of privacy conscious users banding together to create a shell corp to pay for a business account? 500 users sounds doable. More the merrier, yeah?

[–] RiderExMachina@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 years ago

Alternatively, you switch to LanguageTool because it does the same thing but it is privacy minded.

[–] Metaright@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

I think I'd rather not give the company money at all.

[–] OnopordumAcanthium@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

So some people want to use the advantages of AI that ONLY works properly because of all the user data collected... But refuse to contribute.

[–] nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de 28 points 2 years ago

I am perfectly fine with providing training data for AI, and have actually spent hours contributing to various projects. However, it is super scummy for a company to collect and use sensitive user data (literally a keylogger) not only without any form of communication or consent, but where the only way to opt out is to pay.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 years ago

Stuff like this should always be opt-in. It looks better on the company and builds trust.

Ideally, offer payment for users who opt-in to have their writing scraped and used to train AI.

Seems like this could easily be a win-win situation if they gave it a few seconds of thought.

[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why do you assume everyone wants this garbage? We were fine without it.

[–] foo@programming.dev 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That's basically what people said about:

  • mobile phones
  • The web
  • computers
  • calculators

I'd also argue that the customers of grammarly want this because they are paying for it. At least In the extension or app

[–] MrSqueezles@lemm.ee 18 points 2 years ago

Uhh umm... You are the product! Aaand... Shill for greedy corporations!

I remember when Google said quite openly that they'd give us email addresses with more storage than we'd ever dreamed for life and in return, they'd scan the first few sentences of all messages and use them to target ads at us and we were all like, "Sounds fair."

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