“The backlash against Duolingo going ‘AI-first’ didn’t even matter”

Silberling, Amanda. “The backlash against Duolingo going ‘AI-first’ didn’t even matter”. TechCrunch. 7 August 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/07/the-backlash-against-duolingo-going-ai-first-didnt-even-matter/

Duolingo shared that they beat its quarterly revenue estimates, even after the company faces major backlash for opting for AI over humans. It was back in April, that Duolingo CEO, Luis von Ahn, “shared that Duolingo would become an ‘AI-first’ company”. This included ending the use of contract workers and discouraging teams from hiring employees. However, with Duolingo’s introduction of AI, the company introduced 148 new language courses. While many critics say the AI features have made the app worse, the companies financials show otherwise.

When thinking of an article I wanted to use for this assignment, it brought me back to when Duolingo first announced its plans to become “AI-first”. I found this out when I saw that Duolingo’s comments on TikTok started to call them out on the change– like many other people, I had followed Duolingo on the app because of their funny videos and witty comments on other videos. I did some research of my own and found out it was true. I was originally mad that the company decided to focus more on AI, but the more I looked into it, I saw some benefits. As the app is for learning languages, I thought this would be a decent use for AI. But, I also saw people testing out the new language courses and some of the comments on small mistakes from them. Because as with all AI, there are bound to be mistakes or hallucinations, and even with a major company using it, they are not going to catch every mistake.