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This looks opt-in? You have to have a writefull account?

I do not see that icon yet on my interface, am I safe?

Even scientists won't need to think anymore!

Can it make tikz drawings? If yes I would see a point …

Writefull has summarized your post by saying that you are exhibiting Writefull indignation.

Are you sure it's opt-out? It seems to be switched off by default for me.

It was switched on (yellow chunks all over the LaTeX) in all documents I opened to work on.

I can elaborate on why I think it's a bad idea (starting with the opt-out v. opt-in aspect). But it boils down to the fact that so far, all improvements I have seen thanks to the AI tools are papers that are smoother, but also less informative. Fewer typos and grammatical mistakes, but less content.

So in reality you're mostly annoyed because before you could use typos and grammatical errors as a proxy to detect weak papers due to some correlation between the two, whereas now it requires reading them carefully?

No! I don't mind the grammatical errors. They don't correlate with anything. I hate the fluff. I'd rather read something with typos than pages of nothing.

No matter how you think about this, I do not think Overleaf is to blame. They are not enabling a new capability. They making an existing capability (AI text polishing), that was heavily used already, easier to use. If they would not do it, an competitor might emerge that does.

I can blame the game, if not the players. Also, that I was opted in by default instead of given the option is a huge conceptual difference.

Yes, AI writing does not have sufficient precision for scientific writing. The devil's in the details and AI just doesn't get them right in my experience. There's still no replacement for careful deliberation in the choice of words

It's sufficient to write grant proposals, though! 🙊