curious if you're customizing anyway, why not use eg ripgrep?

Others have already given valid answers: grep is not ripgrep [their params don't match], so it's a bad idea to alias 'grep' to use ripgrep. But it's okay to alias 'ripgrep' (or 'rg' or whatever) to use ripgrep with some args.

repgrep's CLI options and general behavior are different from grep. I tend to use both for different things.

Not OP, but I use ripgrep and customize it with an alias as well, so it applies equally there