The Backlash Against Duolingo Going ‘ai-first’ Didn’t Even Matter

Duolingo announced connected Wednesday that it hit its quarterly gross estimates, moreover though nan institution faced wide backlash for choosing to clasp generative AI complete quality workers. Duolingo banal roseate almost 30% connected nan news.

In April, CEO Luis von Ahn shared that Duolingo would go an “AI-first” company, phasing retired its usage of statement workers. He besides discouraged teams from hiring much employees, unless if nan squad is incapable to automate much of its work. With nan usage of generative AI, Duolingo introduced 148 caller connection courses, much than doubling its erstwhile offerings.

“Without AI, it would return america decades to standard our contented to much learners,” von Ahn wrote astatine nan time. “We beryllium it to our learners to get them this contented ASAP.”

While immoderate Duolingo users person based on that these AI features are making nan app worse, nan company’s financial metrics show a different story. Now, nan institution anticipates making complete $1 cardinal successful gross this year, and regular progressive users person grown 40% twelvemonth complete year. The maturation is significant, but falls successful nan little scope of nan company’s estimates of increasing betwixt 40-45%, which an investor brought up to von Ahn connected Wednesday’s quarterly net call..

“The logic we came [in] towards nan little extremity was because I said immoderate worldly astir AI, and I didn’t springiness capable context. Because of that, we sewage immoderate backlash connected societal media,” von Ahn said. “The astir important point is we wanted to make nan sentiment connected our societal media positive. We stopped posting edgy posts and started posting things that would get our sentiment much positive. That has worked.”

On TikTok, nan apical comments connected Duolingo’s videos often stay criticisms of nan company’s AI approach. Snarky commenters will inquire if videos pinch aggregate group successful them are made pinch AI, to which Duolingo will reply, “Nope. Made by our awesome team!”

But moreover if nationalist sentiment has shifted toward Duolingo, its bottommost statement has not… and from nan company’s perspective, that’s what matters.