Grammarly, which offers a real-time spelling and grammar checking tool, is expanding its artificial intelligence resources with a new generative AI tool called GrammarlyGo that the company says is intended to improve communication. Most Grammarly users will be able to use it starting in April.

“Poor communication erodes relationships, stifles business growth and results, and slows feedback loops that devour our time, just to name a few effects,” Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Grammarly’s global head of product, wrote in a blog post. “In research we conducted with The Harris Poll last year, we established that poor communication costs US businesses up to $1.2 trillion annually — or $12,506 per employee.” You can read the full report here.

According to Grammarly, GrammarlyGo will use personal, organizational and situational context to help craft messages for email, social media and long-form communication. That means if you use GrammarlyGo to write an interoffice message to your work team, the tool could help make your message sound more professional.

GrammarlyGo will give you prompts to improve, simplify or shorten a message, as well as a prompt to adjust the message’s tone for different scenarios. You’ll also be able to enter your own prompt to fit your needs.

GrammarlyGo can also be used to generate outlines or ideas, which can be added to messages or used as references. The tool will also have one-click prompts to help you get over writer’s block. 

“By embracing new technologies like generative AI, we can advance our vision of supporting the entire process — from conception to comprehension,” Roy-Chowdhury wrote. 

Grammarly is the latest tech company to announce an AI tool in the wake of OpenAI’s ChatGPT bursting onto the scene at the end of 2022. Other companies, like Microsoft, Google and Snapchat, have announced AI chatbot tools that a person can seemingly carry on a conversation with and that are poised to remake internet search and other familiar online activities, from writing essays to planning a week’s vacation to a new destination. These tools can also generate messages and ideas but don’t appear to take context into account when generating content.

GrammarlyGo’s ability to understand context and tone to a limited degree implies this AI tool is not only a generative AI but a very basic contextual AI, as well. 

According to Techopedia, generative AI is an umbrella term that can apply to any type of AI that can be used to create things like text, images, video, audio and code. The technology company Symbl.ai writes that contextual AI can analyze cultural, historical and situational aspects of data to make the best decision. 

According to Grammalry, GrammarlyGo can understand situational context enough to create tailored communication for different scenarios. You still need to input certain data, like the level of formality and tone, into GrammarlyGo in order for it to create the right message. Although the tool may not intuitively be able to respond appropriately, it can differentiate between crafting a casual and formal response if it’s given the data.

GrammarlyGo will be available across other Grammarly products, like Grammarly Premium, Business, Education and Grammarly for Developers. Some Grammarly Free users in select markets will also be able to access GrammarlyGo.

For more, check out what to know about Google’s AI chatbot Bard, Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing and Snapchat’s MyAI.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

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