Grammarly Authorship: Enhancing Writing Transparency for Students and Teachers
Grammarly Authorship is a new feature designed to automatically categorize writing based on its origin. It distinguishes between content that is human-typed, AI-generated, or sourced externally. Grammarly produces a Writing Activity Report, which allows users to review the origins of their text and indicates where citations might be necessary. In addition, it shows how much time is spent on the document and includes a “replay” option to view text creation step by step, labeled as human-authored, AI-generated, or other.
To access Authorship, users must install Grammarly's browser extension and activate the feature. Once enabled, Authorship tracks the writing process in real-time, categorizing text as entered into a document.
Currently, this feature is in beta in Google Docs with plans to expand its availability to other platforms in the future.
Tom’s Take: I think Grammarly Authorship will be welcomed by students and teachers. It offers an immediate way to distinguish between human and AI-generated text, (hopefully) encouraging students to think more critically about the source of the work they submit. Additionally, it provides teachers with a convenient tool to identify the origins of submitted text quickly. In all, it brings much more transparency to the writing process.
That said, students could potentially bypass Authorship by retyping text identified as AI-generated. There’s also a possibility of Authorship mislabeling certain content. From a workflow perspective, the lack of integration with learning management systems (LMS) could be a challenge for both students and teachers, as it limits the feature’s ease of use in classroom settings.
For a more extensive review of Authorship, I suggest reading Anna Mill’s Writing process tracking is coming to Grammarly - and students and teachers need it.
