Grammarly’s parent company, Superhuman, has pulled the plug on its Expert Review feature after writers discovered that the AI was generating suggestions supposedly “inspired by” their published work, without their knowledge or consent.
The feature, which launched back in August, used third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions styled after influential writers and experts. The problem? Those experts had no idea their work was being used this way.
Did Grammarly actually ask anyone?
No, Grammarly did not obtain permission from the people whose likenesses were used as expert references. While other AI companies also scrape data from online libraries and websites without explicitly asking permission, they at least did not use anyone’s likeness so blatantly. This is where Grammarly went off the rails.
Grammarly
The backlash began after The Verge’s editor-in-chief and several staff members discovered that their names were being used as style references within the tool. As expected, they were not happy. Superhuman’s initial response was to launch an opt-out email inbox for affected writers, but even that was not enough to calm things down.
Now, the company has disabled the feature entirely. “Based on the feedback we’ve received, we clearly missed the mark. We are sorry and will do things differently going forward,” said Ailian Gan, Superhuman’s director of product management.
What comes next?
Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra took to LinkedIn to apologize and outline a more opt-in vision for the future: one where experts can choose to participate and even build a business model around it.
He said, “For experts, this is a chance to build that same ubiquitous bond with users, much like Grammarly has. But in this world, experts choose to participate, shape how their knowledge is represented, and control their business model.”
It’s an interesting idea, but the damage is already done. Asking for forgiveness instead of permission is rarely a good look, especially when the people you are impersonating are journalists.
Spotify aims to provide a consistent listening experience that uses minimal data. As a result, your audio quality might be less than ideal, especially if you’re using a pair of high-fidelity headphones or high-end speakers. Here’s how to fix that.
Switch audio streaming quality to Very High or Lossless
The default audio streaming quality in both the mobile and desktop Spotify apps is set to Automatic, which usually keeps the audio quality at Normal, which is only 96 Kbps. Even though Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis codec, which is superior to MP3, OGG files exhibit slight (but noticeable) digital noise, poor bass detail, dull treble, and a narrow soundstage at 96 Kbps.
Even worse, Spotify is aggressive about adjusting the automatic bitrate. Even though 4G is more than fast enough to stream high-quality OGG files, even with a weak signal, Spotify may still drop the quality to Low, which has a bitrate of just 24 Kb/s. You will notice such a sharp drop in quality, even on a pair of bottom-of-the-barrel headphones.
To rectify this, open the Spotify app, tap your user image, open “Settings and privacy,” and tap the “Media Quality” menu. Once there, set Wi-Fi streaming quality and cellular streaming quality to “Very high” or “Lossless.”
I recommend setting cellular streaming quality to Very high and reserving Lossless for Wi-Fi, since lossless streaming is very data-intensive. One hour of streaming lossless files can take up to 1GB of data, as well as a good chunk of your phone’s storage, because Spotify caches files you’re frequently streaming. Besides, you’ll struggle to notice the difference unless you’re listening to music on a wired pair of high-end headphones or speakers; wireless connection just doesn’t have the bandwidth needed to convey the full fidelity of Spotify lossless audio.
You might opt for High quality if you have a capped data plan, but I recommend doing so only if you stream hours upon hours’ worth of music every single day over a cellular network. For instance, I burn through about 8 GB of data per month on average while streaming about two hours of very high-quality music over a cellular network each day.
Feeling the squeeze when listening to your favorite song?
Set audio download quality to Very high or Lossless
If you tend to download songs and albums for offline listening, you should also set the audio download quality to “Very high” or “Lossless.” This setting is located just under the audio streaming quality section.
If you’ve got enough free storage on your phone, opt for the latter, but if you’d rather save storage space, set it to Very high. You’ll hardly hear the difference, but lossless files are about five times larger than the 320 Kb/s OGG files Spotify offers at its Very high quality setting, and they can quickly fill up your phone’s storage.
Adjust video streaming quality at your discretion
The last section of the Media quality menu is Video streaming quality. This sets the quality of video podcasts and music videos available for certain songs. Since I care about neither, I set it to “Very high” on Wi-Fi and “Normal” on cellular, but you should tweak the two options at your discretion because songs sound notably better at higher video streaming quality levels.
If you often watch videos over cellular and have unlimited data, feel free to toggle video quality to very high.
Make sure Data Saver mode is disabled
Even if your audio quality is set to Very high or Lossless, Spotify will switch to low-quality streaming if the app’s Data saver mode is enabled. This option is located in the Data saving and offline menu. Open the menu, then set it to “Always off,” or choose “Automatic” to have Spotify’s Data Saver mode kick in alongside your phone’s Data Saver mode.
You can also enable volume normalization and play around with the built-in equalizer
Credit: Lucas Gouveia / How-To Geek
Last but not least, there are two additional features you can play with to improve your listening experience. The first is volume normalization, which sets the same loudness for every track you’re listening to. This can be handy because different albums are mastered at different loudness levels, with newer music usually being louder.
Since I’m an album-oriented listener, I keep the option disabled. I can just play an album and set the audio volume accordingly, and I don’t really mind louder songs when listening to playlists, artists, or song radios.
But if you can’t stand one song being quiet and the next rattling the windows, visit the Playback menu, enable “Volume normalization,” and set it to “Quiet” or “Normal.” The “Loud” option can digitally compress files, and neither Spotify nor I recommend using it. This also happens with “Quiet” and “Normal,” since both adjust the decibel level of the master recording for each song, but the compression level is much lower and extremely hard to notice.
Before I end this, I should also mention that you can access the equalizer directly from the Spotify app, where you can fine-tune your music listening experience or pick one of the available equalizer presets. If your phone has a built-in equalizer, Spotify will open it; if it doesn’t, you can use Spotify’s. On my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S21 FE), I can only use One UI’s built-in equalizer.
To open the equalizer, open “Playback,” then hit the “Equalizer” button. Now you can equalize your audio to your heart’s content.
Adjusting just a few settings can have a drastic impact on your Spotify listening experience. If you aren’t satisfied with Spotify’s sound quality, make sure to adjust the audio before jumping ship. You should also check the sound quality settings from time to time, as Spotify can reset them during app updates.
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