Confirm was featured in HR Brew's "Bot or Not?" newsletter, with CEO Josh Merrill discussing how ChatGPT can draft accurate performance reviews based on peer feedback — and what this means for the future of the review process.
HR Brew's "Bot or Not?" series examines the genuine versus overhyped applications of AI in HR. Confirm's approach to using ChatGPT for performance review drafting landed in the "genuinely useful" category, with Josh Merrill providing context on how it works and where human judgment remains essential.
The core insight: ChatGPT doesn't generate performance reviews from nothing. It synthesizes them from structured feedback that employees and peers have already provided. The difference matters enormously. An AI that's making things up about employees is a liability. An AI that's weaving together what multiple colleagues have observed about a person's contributions is doing sophisticated editorial work that would otherwise take a manager hours.
The peer feedback aspect is particularly important. When performance data comes from multiple sources rather than a single manager's perspective, the resulting review is both more accurate and more fair. Recency bias is reduced because the data spans a longer period. Manager blind spots are filled in by colleagues who see different aspects of the employee's work. The resulting draft gives the reviewing manager a starting point that reflects the employee's actual impact — not just the slice visible from one vantage point.
Josh also addressed the human oversight question directly: ChatGPT-generated drafts require manager review and editing. The goal isn't to remove humans from the loop but to remove the blank page problem and the cognitive load of synthesis — freeing manager attention for the judgment calls that actually require human wisdom.
Read the full newsletter: Bot or Not? — HR Brew
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