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Grammarly, the tool meant to assist with spelling, grammar, and in identifying plagiarism, is being sued for a new AI tool called Expert Review. The tool offers editing suggestions from established authors and writersostensibly not a bad ideaexcept that none of those people consented to being involved in the first place. The tool offers real-time writing tips from celebrities like Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well as journalists, like The Markup founder Julia Angwin, who filed the class action lawsuit against Grammarlys parent company Superhuman, after she alleged the tool used her likeness without her permission: have worked for decades honing my skills as a writer and editor, and I am distressed to discover that a tech company is selling an imposter version of my hard-earned expertise, Angwin said in a statement. From photorealistic deepfakes on Sora to scammers using chatbots to swindle users out of money, AI has already been bending reality and using peoples likenesses at worrying speeds. The Grammarly lawsuit shows how professional writers likenesses are also up for grabsin addition to having that same technology threaten their very careers and livelihoods. This is the latest battle in the war over what legal and ethical boundaries AI should not cross. Sorry, not sorry The federal lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York Wednesday, challenges Grammarlys misappropriation of the names and identities of hundreds of journalists, authors, writers, and editors to earn profits for Grammarly and its owner, Superhuman, per court documents reviewed by Fast Company. Angwins lawsuit comes as Superhuman has recently announced plans to phase out Expert Review. Shishir Mehrotra, Superhumans CEO, addressed the decision to remove the tool in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday: This kind of scrutiny improves our products, and we take it seriously. He continued: As context, the agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans. But commenters on the public post, which include a linguistics professor, a New York Times editor, a public library clerk and others in the writing and editing industry, pushed back, arguing the CEOs words dont take real accountability or capture the gravity of the situation. In a statement shared with Fast Company, Mehrotra followed up on his apology, but was dismissive of the lawsuit. We have reviewed the lawsuit, and we believe the legal claims are without merit and will strongly defend against them, he said in the statement. The new identity wars As AI continues to develop at breakneck pace, many workersespecially ones in fields at high risk for automation, like writing and editingthis Grammarly lawsuit brings fresh fears around how workers can protect not just their work, but their identities. And many professionals are taking action. Actor Matthew McConaughey, for example, filed eight trademark applications earlier this year to protect his likeness and voice as AI deepfakes being scarily realistic and accurate. Angwins attorney Peter Romer-Friedman calls the situation a very straightforward legal case, telling Fast Company that various state laws for a long time have provided that it’s unlawful to use a person’s name, whether they’re famous or not, for commercial purposes or gained without their consent. He says that’s exactly what Superhuman did through the Grammarly expert review tool. Regardless of how it plays out, legal and AI experts worry about what the incident means for the future of many industriesand that some workplaces may not be ready. The lawsuit points to a troubling trend, says Vered Zlaikha, partner and Head of Cyber & AI practice at Lipa Meir & Co. In the race to attract users and market share, some AI developers and vendors may be tempted to push legal and ethical boundaries. She also thinks this could be the first of many such legal battles between companies using AI tools, and the workers they affect. We may well see additional lawsuits and class actions brought by various affected parties, including users and individuals referenced or implicated by AI, she notes. Dalit Heldenberg, an AI adoption strategist and advisor, agreed, saying were already seeing it. Disney recently sent a cease-and-desist to Google over AI tools generating its characters, which led Gemini to start blocking those prompts, Heldenberg told Fast Company. It’s a sign that companies are beginning to draw clear boundaries around how AI products can use their intellectual property. In other words, even people or companies who use an AI tool without being aware of its legality may open themselves up to being sued. Fast Company asked Angwins lawyer point blank if the people and organizations who used Expert Review were legally exposed and if the firm planned to pursue legal action against them. I cant speak to that at this time, he replied. Look before you leap into AI Zlaikha advises companies using AI tools to ask questions before jumping in and rolling them out. What contractual protections are in place? she asks, and who bears responsibility in the face of legal action? How does the organization retain control and oversight over how the tool is created and deployed? While larger companies will likely have the resources to adapt to the shifting AI litigation landscape, theyre also more likely to be targets. As Heldenberg put it, When you have millions of users and hundreds of millions in revenue, you’re the first call a plaintiff’s lawyer makes. Smaller companies face a different risk: they often adopt AI tools without fully understanding the legal exposure they might create. As for Angwin, as the lawsuit states, she hopes to stop Grammarly and its owner, Superhuman, from trading on her name and those of hundreds of other journalists, authors, editors, and even lawyers and to stop the companies from attributing words to them that they never uttered. Meanwhile, Superhuman CEO Mehrotra, says there is a better approach to bringing experts onto our platform and we are working on a version that will provide significantly more benefit to both users and experts, he said in the statement to Fast Company.
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Every day in America, over 100 people are involved in a life-altering crash that severely injures them or kills them. And that 100-per-day doesnt even include all the people whose lives are impacted indirectly by severe crashes. Vision Zero is a road safety philosophy that originated in Sweden in the 1990s and has since been adopted by cities across the United States and Europe. Its premise is straightforward: traffic deaths and serious injuries are preventable and can therefore be eliminated. With the right street design, traffic enforcement, and public awareness, everyone can get around safely. The problem is that severe crashes are a catastrophe so routine that it barely registers in the news cycle. Americans have been conditioned to think traffic violence is inevitable. One outcome of that conditioning is that people will campaign against transportation projects that improve safety. Thats rightagainst safety. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-desktop.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Urbanism Speakeasy\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/\u0022\u003Eurbanismspeakeasy.com.\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453933,"imageMobileId":91453932,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}} Heres a social media comment someone made to me in response to redesigning a street to improve safety: Members of the public communicate their risk tolerance through voting. It is the job of engineers to comply with that, not to second guess democratic choices. I get comments like that all the time, and its not just anonymous bots. Putting transportation safety projects up for a Yes/No vote reminds me of this quote thats often attributed to Ben Franklin: Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Democracy is a trap We dont vote on airplane safety. Imagine being handed a survey when you board a plane: Should the airline prioritize your arrival time or the structural integrity of the landing gear? That would be absurd. We trust aviation engineers to design safe aircraft. Passengers vote with their wallets, but no one gets a veto over whether safety is a priority in the first place. Surface transportation doesn’t work this way. When a city proposes narrowing a street to reduce speeding, neighbors show up to meetings and call it an “attack on drivers.” When a protected bike lane is added to a corridor with a history of fatal crashes, it gets removed after community complaints. When a signal timing change is proposed to give pedestrians more crossing time, it gets killed because drivers worry about congestion. When illegal parking that blocks sightlines at intersections is enforced by police, the cries of over-reach flood city hall. Safety improvements frequently die by popular vote and public pressure. Americans, given the choice between their personal convenience and other people’s safety, have repeatedly chosen convenience. This is the democracy trap: the idea that every engineering decision must survive a public referendum, including decisions that exist specifically to protect human life. There’s a reflexive response to this argument that goes: “So you want to just override what people want by taking out a lane? That’s anti-democratic.” That framing means your life, your childs life, your neighbors life, my life, are all subject to negotiation. It means a neighborhood miles away gets to weigh in on whether a dangerous intersection near your home gets fixed. It means the people who are most likely to be harmedpedestrians, cyclists, children walking to school, elderly residents are outvoted by people who are primarily concerned about shaving seconds off their drive no matter the cost to others. We don’t hold referendums on building codes. We don’t ask neighborhoods to vote on whether restaurants should have to refrigerate meat. Some protections exist precisely because they shouldn’t be contingent on majority sentiment. The same logic should apply to street design. Get out the vote The binary Yes/No vote to allow or forbid safety improvements needs to be tossed out. That doesnt mean the public should be shut out of transportation decisions, it means the kind of community engagement needs to change. Right now, transportation agencies and local governments often ask the wrong question: Do you want this safety improvement? That question is almost designed to fail, because most people don’t understand how street design contributes to crashes. They don’t know that wider lanes encourage faster driving. They don’t know that a 20 mph impact is survivable for a pedestrian while a 40 mph impact usually isn’t. They dont know that on-street parking sometimes makes a street safer and sometimes makes a street more dangerous. City transportation systems are complicated. When you ask people an uninformed question, you get an uninformed answer. The better approach is education first, options second. Explain what Vision Zero is. Show people the data on speed and crash severity. Help them understand what road diets, raised crosswalks, curb extensions, signal changes, and what each one accomplishes. Ask for input about the problems theyre experiencing: People drive too fast on this street. I wish my neighborhood was quieter. I cant see around the corner when I turn. Nobody stops their car for me at the crosswalk. The light turns red before I can walk across the street. Theres no easy way for my kids to ride bikes to school. I have to walk 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop. If I miss the bus, I have to wait an hour for the next one. That’s meaningful public engagement. It respects people’s intelligence while also respecting the reality that prioritizing human life is not up for debate. Culture shift is necessary In the US alone, tens of thousands are killed in traffic crashes every year. Hundreds of thousands more experience life-altering injuries. The idea that driving fast and without friction is a kind of birthright is woven into our infrastructure, our zoning, our politics, and our sense of personal freedom. Changng safety culture is hard, but it has changed before, in other places, and it can change here. We don’t ask voters to approve seatbelt laws every few years. We don’t hold referendums on speed limits every time someone complains. Engineers, pilots, air traffic controllers, and ground crews made aviation extraordinarily safe not by polling passengers, but by treating safety as a non-negotiable foundation, and then inviting the public to make choices within that foundation. That’s the model for reaching Vision Zero. Not a top-down dismissal of community voices, but a reordering of the conversation: safety first, preferences second. Engage people early and help them visualize what’s possible, and for crying out loud, build safer transportation systems. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-desktop.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Urbanism Speakeasy\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/\u0022\u003Eurbanismspeakeasy.com.\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453933,"imageMobileId":91453932,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}
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Cambodia said Friday it has drafted its first law targeting online scam centers, after vowing to shut them down by the end of April.Cambodia is a major hub for scam operations, which extort money from victims online through bogus investment schemes and feigned romances. Victims around the world are estimated to have been cheated out of tens of billions of dollars annually.At the same time, thousands of people, especially from other Asian nations, have been recruited with false job offers and then forced to work in scam centers in conditions of near-slavery.“This law is the most important legal instrument for Cambodia in combating scams online, fighting money laundering and demonstrating that Cambodia is not a paradise or a safe haven for criminals,” Information Minister Neth Pheaktra said in a statement.The new legislation approved by the Cabinet sets five to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500 million to 1 billion riels ($125,000-250,000) for organizing or directing a technology fraud site. In case of human trafficking or violence, detention or confinement, the penalties rage from 10 to 20 years plus a fine of up to 2 billion riels ($500,000). In case of a death linked to a scam center, the offense is punishable by imprisonment from 15 to 30 years, or life. Workers have died when they tried to escape.The new legislation must be approved by Parliament.Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday that the government since July had targeted 250 locations believed to be carrying out online scams, and has shut down about 200.Since last July, the government has filed 79 cases involving 697 alleged scam ringleaders and their associates, according to Chhay Sinarith.Cambodia has repatriated almost 10,000 scam center workers from 23 countries, with fewer than 1,000 waiting to return home. Others who have escaped or been released from raided centers have returned on their own.Neth Pheaktra said that the government “has made strong efforts to combat this crime in order to protect Cambodia’s reputation and economy, which have previously been damaged by online scams, and the government does not receive any revenue from these activities.”Cambodia has launched previous crackdowns but without major effect on scam centers, and some experts are skeptical it can eliminate the criminal industry.“The real question is whether this effort targets the system that enables the industry, not just the buildings where scams happen,” said Jacob Sims, an expert on transnational crime and a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center. “Past crackdowns in Cambodia have often left the financial and protection networks intact, allowing operations to quickly reconstitute.”Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report. Sopheng Cheang, Associated Press
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