Empowering Instructors | Supporting Excellence
Grammarly’s newest AI-powered features are explored in this video, including a writing humanizer, an automated citation finder and an instructor-profiling grade predictor.
If you haven't used Grammarly in a while, you should know that there are a lot of new AI powered features, especially for users who have a pro account like I'm working in here now. Grammarly can still live natively in Microsoft Word, but I'm actually going to start by adding a new doc here in the web browser based version. In the browser-based interface, you can type your essay off to the left like I'm doing here, or you could use their AI chat over to the right. I'm going to use the AI chat to tell Grammarly what I need to write a paper about. I'm telling Grammarly that I need to write a 500 word essay on the role that clowns play in Shakespeare's tragedies. I'm going to tell it that it's for a university level English class and just ask for some help.
Even though I just asked the chat for some help, it actually generated the entire 500 word essay for me. So, Grammarly AI chat is not quite like interfacing with ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or one of those other chat bots. When I ask it for some help, it actually generates the essay for me. Now that I have my essay, I can navigate over here to this right-hand menu and review some of these new AI powered tools that Grammarly has. Let's start with this humanize tool. The humanize tool is designed to make your AI writing sound more human. There are a few different styles to choose from. I selected the scholar tool. What it does is read each paragraph and then suggest revisions to make it sound more human. It's very easy for the student to just go through and accept these revisions without even having to read them.
There's also an AI detector and a paraphrase tool. It gives suggestions on how the literary analysis is composed and then you can change the writing style to make it sound more human or more academic and professional. It's going to go through and rewrite entire paragraphs for you and paraphrase them better. Again, all of this happens in a way where you can just click accept and not even have to read the text that's been written or generated. One of the most alarming new tools is the citation finder. When you click on the citation finder, Grammarly begins searching the internet for citations that match the text you've written or generated. Right now, it's scanning the internet, Google Scholar, and other open-source databases to find sources that would substantiate the arguments in this paper. The student can review the different suggested in-text citations. They even have the ability to insert them directly into the paper. If they don't like a particular citation, they can look at some of the other sources Grammarly found by clicking through the tabs at the top and then go ahead and insert an in-text citation without ever having to actually read the original source before inserting it into their paper. Of course, it also generates the references list for the student, which they can preview here and then ultimately choose to insert if they want. Perhaps one of the most invasive new tools Grammarly has released is this AI grader tool. You can add in the rubric if you have it. And you can also add the name of the instructor who will be grading the manuscript. You can enter the instructor's name and the university. And if you know the course, you can attach a rubric if you want to and then predict your grade. What Grammarly is doing right now is looking up the professor by name. It's searching for the professor's public-facing profile, things like LinkedIn or a Google Scholar profile to learn more about the professor who will be grading the manuscript.
Then it generates suggestions to make the manuscript more attractive to the professor who will be grading it.
My boss, Dr. Mara Huber specializes in experiential learning and so when I entered her as the instructor who would be grading the manuscript, Grammarly suggested adding experiential learning examples to make the paper more appealing to Dr. Huber.
I can insert those examples directly into the manuscript. I can also refresh to see what my new grade prediction will be. Now, Grammarly is suggesting that I include language about international collaboration, which is another one of Dr. Huber's scholarly interests. Suffice it to say that Grammarly's new generative AI tools are a little alarming, and I encourage faculty to take the time to familiarize themselves with what Grammarly can now do.
Grammarly's current Pro account features allow users to generate full essays via AI chat, run that writing through a "humanizer" to disguise its origins, automatically locate and insert citations from Google Scholar without reading the sources, and paraphrase entire paragraphs in one click. Each of these steps can be completed with minimal engagement with the actual content; in many cases, students need only click "Accept" to move through them.
Perhaps the most striking new feature is Grammarly's AI Grader tool, which allows a student to input their instructor's name and institutional affiliation. Grammarly then searches that instructor's public-facing profiles — LinkedIn, Google Scholar, and similar sources — to generate tailored suggestions designed to make a submission more appealing to that specific grader. Faculty who have not encountered this tool may be caught off guard by how precisely it can target individual instructors' known scholarly interests.
This video is intended to help faculty across all disciplines understand what Grammarly can do, so they can make informed decisions about assessment design, classroom policy, and how they communicate expectations around AI use to their students.
Grammarly Pro is a helpful writing tool that can support faculty in everyday tasks like responding to emails, creating course materials, giving student feedback, and revising research or professional writing. It uses AI to suggest improvements in grammar, clarity, tone, and organization, which can save time and make communication more polished and accessible. While it can also help generate ideas or reword content, faculty should still review everything carefully to make sure it reflects their expertise, intent, and academic standards.
Takeaways for Faculty