It seems like every product on the tech market has to have artificial intelligence these days. There’s AI built into all of the big software suites (Microsoft, Google, Adobe…), of course, but it’s also in phones, refrigerators, cars, toys, and more. AI isn’t new. It’s been developing for over half a century, but it’s the newest buzzword.
Just as the word “color” sold TVs in the 1960’s, it seems that “AI” sells everything in 2025. Unfortunately, AI doesn’t always make things better, as you can see from AI-generated images of people with too many (or too few) fingers and AI-powered cars that don’t understand speed limits.
I’ve been using Microsoft Word for 40 years now, and despite its faults, it’s the undisputed king of serious word processing today. Sure, you can write a report in Google Docs, but try formatting a 250-page technical book in it without loading a bunch of third-party add ons. Word has had grammar checking for a long time. It’s far from perfect, but it’s definitely useful. Now, word has AI grammar checking, and it’s gotten much, much worse.
When I finished the first draft of my latest book (you’ll be hearing more about that soon), I looked at the suggestions from Word’s grammar checker. Most were questionable; many actually changed the meaning of the sentences and/or made them flat-out wrong. And when I tell it to ignore a particular error, it reflags it the next time I open the document, so I’m constantly looking at over 100 “errors” that are actually not errors.
For your reading enjoyment, let me share a few of the more egregious examples. Each one shows what I originally wrote, and then what Word wants to do in italics on the next line.
Clearly, it’s trying to parse the sentence and failing. A comma would make no sense here at all.
The only way this change would make sense is with an article in front of it (e.g., “get water to a crop”), but that’s not how people speak of irrigating a bunch of food plants.
I don’t even need to comment on how senseless this one is.
This constitutes a failure to comprehend the difference between “larger birds” and “more birds that are large.”
Again, the suggested change is indisputably wrong.
I don’t know whether Word thinks that “finish” and “left” are nouns in this context or whether it really doesn’t understand verb tenses.
This “grammar error” showed up after fixing the “spelling error” by adding “nocked” to the spellcheck dictionary. Nocking an arrow (fitting the arrow to the bowstring) is a term everyone has encountered if they study history, bow hunt, watch the Olympics, take an archery class, or read a fantasy novel.
Is there really some dialect of English in use somewhere that considers “this many book” or “these many books” do be valid phrases?
“Musical” is being used as an adjective. “Musically” is an adverb. *sigh*
Not according to the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Style Guide or my high school English teachers!
While it’s possible to incorporate that change by dropping the next two words (“She had grayer hair…”), the change as recommended by Word (“She had grayer in her hair…”) is senseless.
These examples, all pulled from the same book, are just a few of the ridiculous corrections that Word’s grammar checker has suggested. I have a very hard time understanding how this is considered a production-ready feature, and I shudder to think how many mediocre manuscripts are going to get worse if people accept the suggested changes.
I implore all writers—especially new writers—to have human proofreaders and copyeditors review your manuscripts. There may be better AI-based grammar checkers out there, but either way this is a disappointment from Microsoft, a company pushing itself as being on the leading edge of AI.
Gary D. Robson 