Ben Horwitz, a student soon graduating from Harvard Business School, has developed a unique anti-Grammarly tool named “Sinceerly” that intentionally rewrites text to include minor errors. His motivation stems from the growing dominance of artificial intelligence in everyday writing, including emails, letters, and personal communication. In earlier times, writing was judged on perfect grammar, spelling accuracy, and well-structured sentences. Such precision was seen as the hallmark of good writing. However, with the rise of AI systems trained on vast internet data and books, machines are now capable of producing highly polished, error-free, and fluent text almost instantly.
Rise of AI Tools Like ChatGPT and Gemini in Daily Communication
With the rapid popularity of AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, users have increasingly begun relying on them for drafting everything from casual messages to professional correspondence. These tools are capable of generating coherent, grammatically perfect, and contextually strong content, a skill once associated with experienced writers alone. As a result, such polished writing has become extremely common across digital platforms. Over time, people have come to assume that any text that appears too refined or flawless is likely generated by AI rather than written by a human.
Concerns of Writers and AI Detection Challenges
This shift has created concerns among writers and content creators, many of whom have expressed frustration on professional platforms like LinkedIn. They argue that the writing skills they have spent years developing are now often mistaken for AI-generated content. The issue has been further complicated by the use of AI detection tools, which attempt to identify machine-generated writing based on common linguistic and structural patterns. However, these tools are not always accurate, as human writing can also naturally resemble AI patterns due to the way models are trained on human-authored books and online content.
Emergence of Intentional Imperfections in Writing
In response to this evolving situation, some users have begun intentionally inserting small mistakes or less polished phrasing into their writing to appear more human. This growing trend of “imperfect writing” has led to the development of tools like Sinceerly, which automate the process of adding human-like flaws. The idea is to counter the overly perfect tone of AI-generated text and restore a more natural, human style of communication in digital writing.
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How the Sinceerly Chrome Extension Works
Sinceerly is available as a Chrome browser extension and offers three different modes of text transformation. The “Subtle” mode refines writing by removing unnecessary words and converting phrases into contractions. The “Human” mode makes the tone more conversational and often introduces minor typos in the opening sentence. The “CEO” mode converts text into all lowercase, makes it extremely brief, and may even append a “sent from my iPhone” signature if none is provided. After a limited free use, the tool requires a subscription fee of $4.99.
Creator’s Motivation and Personal Experience
According to reports, Horwitz created Sinceerly using Claude and drew inspiration from his own personal challenges. He has mentioned that he is naturally not very fast at typing and has mild dyslexia, which made writing emails time-consuming in his early career. While tools like Grammarly initially helped him improve efficiency and correctness, he now feels overwhelmed by an influx of overly polished AI-generated messages in his inbox. This experience motivated him to build a tool that brings back imperfections, making digital communication feel more authentically human again.