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Is Microsoft bringing Mr Clippy back?

Just after I paid for a year long subscription to Grammarly, Microsoft went and announced their own AI-powered grammar and style checker for Word Online: Ideas In Word. 

According to the article, "Ideas for Word might propose swapping 'society as a whole' for the more concise 'society.'"  Oh come on, really? We're getting rid of all filler verbiage?! That's going to make things very short and concise and boring.

Meanwhile, Google has announced it's own AI-powered grammar suggestions feature coming in Google Docs.


Microsoft getting into AI-powered grammar checking reminds me of a certain utility that Microsoft offered a long time ago; Clippit, commonly referred to as Mr Clippy.
Mr Clippy got a lot of—probably deserved—bad press. One of my favorite pieces about Mr Clippy was in an episode of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me when the panel was imagining Mr Clippy being taken out and shot.


 

Comments

  1. sarikaNovember 20, 2019 at 3:56 AM

    The vocabulary list for INK FOR ALL isn’t nearly as badass as Grammarly's but it's getting more on point. INK for All’s artificial intelligence gets smarter while you work. Also INK For All judges your content against number one content on search engines to ensure your work ranks higher at the top of the page. The more you use INK application the more it adapts. Grammarly isn't able to do that, does not matter what you spend.

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