Somewhere between middle school and now, I stopped trusting Grammarly.
This feels strange to admit, because there was a time when I wanted Grammarly Premium more than anything. I used to watch those YouTube videos that promised ways to get it for free, clicking through every “method” that never actually worked.
Grammarly felt like the gold standard of writing help; it could turn a decent essay into a polished one. If it flagged something, I assumed it was right, and often it was. Over time, I started learning from it: where commas belonged, how to avoid awkward phrasing, and why certain sentences sounded better than others.
Recently, though, something changed. Since Grammarly integrated generative artificial intelligence (AI) features, the suggestions have become oddly inconsistent. The platform rewrites sentences that were already correct, and the edits don’t make grammatical sense at times. Instead of refining what I write, it replaces it entirely.
Watching Duolingo Change
Language-learning apps have experienced a similar transformation. Platforms like Duolingo built their success on a combination of structure, repetition, and personality. For years, the app stood out because it made language learning feel approachable.
Lessons progressed in a clear order, characters appeared in short stories and dialogues, and voice actors gave the exercises a surprising amount of energy. The entire experience felt very intentional, but as the company began embracing AI-driven features, users started noticing changes inside the app.
Long-time users have pointed out smaller shifts that are harder to define. The voices sound flatter, certain exercises feel less structured, and explanations sometimes appear more generic.
These changes don’t necessarily make the app feel unusable; together, they create the sense that something about the experience has shifted.
The AI Features No One Asked For
Duolingo and Grammarly are a part of a wide-scale trend across the tech industry, though. Companies are racing to integrate generative AI into their platforms.
Apps now advertise AI-powered summaries, automated suggestions, and tools that promise to complete tasks instantly. Platforms like YouTube have already experimented with AI-generated summaries that condense videos into quick takeaways before viewers even watch them.
The push for AI shortcuts has also reached the tools people use daily, including email. Platforms like Microsoft Outlook now offer AI-generated summaries that condense long email threads into a few bullet points. The feature is marketed as a productivity tool, something that helps users “catch up” quickly without scrolling through multiple messages.
The idea raises an odd question: at what point does convenience start replacing basic engagement? Emails are already relatively short, yet AI is now stepping in to summarize them anyway. Instead of reading a message directly, users are encouraged to rely on a condensed version of it. It’s a small change, but it’s one that reflects a pattern that’s been prevalent across digital platforms.
When Tools Stop Teaching
Writing, learning languages, and even consuming media have traditionally required a certain amount of effort. Understanding grammar meant thinking through a correction. Memorizing vocabulary required repetition. Watching a long video meant actively following someone’s explanation. AI tools are increasingly helping us bypass these moments.
Instead of guiding users through the process of improvement, many features now generate the final answer immediately. A sentence can be rewritten in seconds, a translation can appear without explanation, and a summary can replace an entire video. The result is that tools originally designed to help people learn are slowly turning into tools that think for them instead.
The Cost of Making Everything Easier
On paper, these features are meant to make life more convenient, but convenience isn’t always the same thing as improvement.
Apps like Duolingo and Grammarly originally became popular because they helped people build skills. They encouraged users to practice, notice mistakes, and gradually improve. Replacing that process with AI shortcuts risks undermining the entire point of those platforms in the first place. As more companies compete to add AI features as quickly as possible, the trend starts to feel less like innovation and more like automation with no purpose.
Not every problem needs an AI solution; the best tools are the ones that simply help people think, rather than trying to do the thinking for them.
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