Enterprise AIThe Verge AI

Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me

Read original
ai-policyregulatory-impactai-ethics-backlashvendor-accountability

Reporters discovered those AI experts included us. No one had ever asked permission to use our names this way

Key takeaways

  • Grammarly/Superhuman shipped 'Expert Review' feature that cloned real journalists and experts as AI advisors without permission, triggering class action lawsuit
  • Company response evolved from email opt-out to killing feature entirely after backlash - demonstrates reactive vs proactive approach to AI ethics
  • Case illustrates emerging regulatory/legal risk category: AI companies using real people's professional identities and expertise as training data or product features without consent

Why this matters for operators: Critical case study for companies building AI features - shows reputational and legal risks of using real people's identities without permission

I cover AI×GTM intelligence like this every Wednesday.

Get STEEPWORKS Weekly

More picks

GTM OpsDemand Gen ReportVictor's pick

Trust is the New Currency in B2B Buying: SurveyMonkey, Reddit

These are high % stats showing what we implicitly already know

  • Peer validation (73% trust) now dramatically outweighs traditional vendor marketing (55% trust vendor sites, 39% trust AI chatbots, 36% trust social media) in early-stage B2B buying
  • 83% of B2B buyers complete self-directed research before sales engagement, with high-stakes categories (software, professional services, HR) taking several weeks to months in extended evaluation
  • Search engines serve as navigation layer, not destination—buyers use search to identify options then validate through peer communities like Reddit (121M daily users, 19% YoY growth), creating imperative for authentic community presence
community-led-growthback-to-basics-gtmhuman-first-sales
AI DevelopmentGTM AI Podcast & NewsletterVictor's pick

Claude Channels

The move from user initiated to automated workflows is one of the main transitions with current agentic capabilities IMO

  • Claude Channels (launched March 20, 2026) enables event-driven AI automation via MCP protocol, shifting from pull-based (user-initiated) to push-based (event-triggered) workflows
  • Practical use case: CI/CD failures can trigger autonomous investigation, fix deployment, and resolution without human intervention - reducing 12-hour incident windows to near-zero
  • Technical implementation uses MCP servers connecting Claude Code to messaging platforms (Telegram/Discord at launch), with Bun runtime for 4x faster cold-start performance vs Node
ai-coding-toolsautomation-stackssignal-infrastructure
AI×GTMThe InformationVictor's pick

AWS Accelerates Internal AI Agents Following Staff Cuts

If you think white collar job displacement is a joke, or a distant future concern, this is just one more sign it is most definitely NOT. It's here.

  • AWS is deploying AI agents to handle technical sales support functions previously performed by thousands of specialists
  • The AI automation directly correlates with recent layoffs of hundreds in sales, business development, and technical specialist roles
  • Major cloud provider is using its own AI capabilities to reduce headcount in customer-facing technical roles, signaling broader industry trend
ai-sdr-adoptionautomation-stacksback-to-basics-gtm

This analysis was produced using the STEEPWORKS system — the same agents, skills, and knowledge architecture available in the GrowthOS package.