The Backlash Against Duolingo Going 'AI-First' Didn't Even Matter
- Reference: 0178608756
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/08/0021259/the-backlash-against-duolingo-going-ai-first-didnt-even-matter
- Source link:
> Now the company anticipates making over $1 billion in revenue this year, and daily active users have grown 40% year-over-year. The growth is significant but falls in the lower range of the company's estimates of growing between 40% and 45%, which an investor brought up to [CEO Luis von Ahn] on Wednesday's quarterly earnings call.
>
> "The reason we came [in] towards the lower end was because I said some stuff about AI, and I didn't give enough context. Because of that, we got some backlash on social media," von Ahn said. "The most important thing is we wanted to make the sentiment on our social media positive. We stopped posting edgy posts and started posting things that would get our sentiment more positive. That has worked."
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/0049233/duolingo-will-replace-contract-workers-with-ai
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/25/0347239/duolingo-faces-massive-social-media-backlash-after-ai-first-comments
[3] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/08/185209/after-ai-first-promise-duolingo-ceo-admits-i-did-not-expect-the-blowback
[4] https://investors.duolingo.com/static-files/0b55110c-2eb9-466d-8549-5459e0851290
[5] https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/07/the-backlash-against-duolingo-going-ai-first-didnt-even-matter/
Quote from eariler Slashdot article (Score:2)
"I speak three languages. I wanted to be able to converse in Spanish. Half a year later I hate them so very very much."
"Duolingo is a piece of crap. I credit them with teaching me vocabulary words nobody else knows, filling my mailbox with
exhortations, and generally being annoying."
Customers vs Owners (Score:3)
The customers hate the idea of more AI. We know it is an inferior product.
The stockmarket loves the idea of firing employees and replacing them with AI, we know it saves money.
The question is not what the stock does in a few weeks. Instead it is do they lose customers over the next couple of months/years. If that happens it won't matter how much money they saved.
Re: (Score:1)
It's an inferior product situationally. If you're selling image recognition, for example, AI will improve your product. I'm not sure if that applies to Duolingo yet but if it doesn't it will soon.
Re: (Score:2)
> We know it is an inferior product.
Do "we" ? Most customers are completely clues as to what AI is and isn't. And given Duolingo have a long history of bargain basement translations relying heavily on user complaints to improve their translations some people who actually do have a clue may even argue they aren't getting an inferior product.
It's easy to look better when your starting point is bad.
Didn't they back off? (Score:2)
That's what I read anyway that they had backed off on the lot of the AI bullshit because it wasn't working yet.
I'm not surprised investors saw them doing ai and jumped on board.
I do seriously question a 40% increase in users. I'm guessing that the bad press from the AI got them some attention and they picked up a bunch of people signing up for trials to see what the hubbub was about.
Don't get me wrong they will eventually replace the vast majority of their employees there's no question of that.
Re: (Score:2)
> I do seriously question a 40% increase in users. I'm guessing that the bad press from the AI got them some attention and they picked up a bunch of people signing up for trials to see what the hubbub was about.
Another wild guess is the AI enabled them to open new languages so their product suddenly became interesting to a whole new set of people.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think so, they hit just about every language. New courses yes, but not new languages.
Re: (Score:2)
Or they simply lied, which is much more credible.
Forums, Sentence discussions – It’s al (Score:1)
Our singular goal is to make language education free, accessible and effective, not to drive revenue and profit at the cost of everything else.
Beta rolling out now...
[1]https://lingonaut.app/ [lingonaut.app]
[1] https://lingonaut.app/
Shitty and cheap moderately priced and mediocre (Score:2)
Duolingo is good for memorizing words you will forget immediately after your vacation. Few stick with it, and a lot waste money.
But if Duolingo can make their product slightly cheaper or keep the price down, even as it drops in quality, huge win for them, as people don't know any better and only focus on price.
Meanwhile, I can probably have free chatgpt make an app for me and the word list to go with it.
The real lesson (Score:2)
Social media outrage just doesn't have any staying power. So, all a company has to do is grin and bear it for a few weeks until the next outrage-du-jour comes around... or, at worst, until people simply get tired of hearing about whatever it is that sparked the outrage in the first place.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a self-promotion article. Don't trust it.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, the second link is their shareholder letter for Q2. I think it's safe to assume, though not certain, that the reported numbers are going to be at least somewhat accurate. The end result doesn't surprise me, so I doubt they're outright lying. At worst, overly zealous spin on what appears to be positive numbers.