Artificial intelligence: Duolingo revolts users

The bosses of the most famous foreign language applications also want to take advantage of AI. They have developed a new commercial strategy – which does not take users into account.

To observe the evolution of Duolingo, the economic interest linked to the development of generative artificial intelligence appears clearly. The American-GuatemalTerique Luis von Ahn (46 year old) computer teacher (46) and his Swiss partner Severin Hacker (40), a graduate of the EPFZ, bet on this technology to grow their business.

In the Silicon Valley, the keyword of the moment is “scaling”: a strategy focused on rapid expansion, often prioritized at the expense of quality. The two fathers of the most used learning application in the world defend the idea that the automatic generation of educational content benefits all users, allowing a multiplication of supports and a reduction in costs.

However, this argument is not unanimous among users. The “AI First” strategy, launched with ambition, already arouses doubts about its viability.

Chronicle of a debacle

More than 130 million people have installed Duolingo on their phone. And thanks to the generative AI, this figure should further climb.

But this is where the trap closes.

In April, Luis Von Ahn, Director General of Duolingo, announces that his company will gradually stop employing people for tasks that “AI can also perform”. He publishes a letter to his teams on LinkedIn, in which management defines the new strategy: “AI First” (“IA first”, in French).

Von Ahn highlights the urgency of the approach:

The CEO of the US company listed on the stock market therefore announces that users will have to accommodate quality losses in their learning a language. And this, because Duolingo will now fade massively at AI.

Users revolt

You should know that Duolingo does not really know the crisis. The company completed 2024 on a turnover of $ 748 million, an increase of 41% in one year. In March this year, there are more than 116 million active users per month, including 9.5 million paid subscribers.

But now the opposite effect begins to occur.

We then witness a violent rain of criticism. Aficionados are unleashed on the networks, all threatening to remove Duolingo. On appstars, negative comments accumulate.

Note that Duolingo had stood out in the past by his communication full of freshness and sassy with Tiktok and company. The marketing team had been able to set the mood thanks to original campaigns.

But today, user dissatisfaction obviously takes up so much space that the creators of the application, accustomed to success, must react.

First decision: deleting all contributions on Tiktok and Instagram, where the community around the app represents millions of subscribers. Then the brand with the owl had a bizarre idea. In a video at the staging developed, the Director of Duolingo confronts a masked employee, whose voice is artificially distorted.

Duolingo thus tries to defuse the fears of users. But the reactions are not very enthusiastic, even openly hostile.

A turnaround that is not a

What surprises the observers is that Duolingo’s management seems to be completely caught by this anti-IA feeling. Von Ahn conceded, in interview, not having imagined such a contrary wind. At the same time, criticism seems frankly exaggerated to him. A way not to mention failure by diverting attention.

As this does not obviously work very well, the boss tries to limit the breakage in another interview. Generative artificial intelligence does not replace the work of employees, he underlines. And he also returns to his announcement concerning the replacement of contractual partners with an AI.

In parallel, he claims to consider AI as a tool “to accelerate work, while maintaining or improving quality”.

Another promise for staff:

American economic magazine Fortune tried to summarize the dilemma of Duolingo management: this sudden unpopularity proves that the concept of “AI First” appeals to investors and managers than to average consumers.

And this, for good reasons:

Fortune Also calls into question the fundamental advantages attributed to AI. Apart from some niches, expected productivity gains are still desired for businesses.

This corresponds to the experiences of many users: they deplore the drop in quality of certain content. The Youtuber Evan Edinger, a faithful fan of the little green owl whose “Streak” impresses, expressed his anger in long videos. The latest learning supports generated by AI often seemed to him soulless.

Sad conclusion of the youtubeur: social media and duolingo applications place data collection and profit above the well-being of individuals.

This does not surprise the experts of the branch.

Commercial model “Made in Silicon Valley”

US online media TechCrunch is mainly interested in Silicon Valley start-ups. Already in 2011, he described the commercial idea at the origin of Duolingo:

The following year, Luis Von Ahn, computer teacher from Guatemala, and his Swiss doctoral student Severin Hacker transformed the idea into business. The two researchers, employed by Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, founded Duolingo.

The principle was then as simple as it is attractive: it holds in two magical words, “crowdsourcing” and “gamification”. Instead of asking perfect strangers something that looks like unpaid work, we try to give them a taste for a fun learning experience.

Gradually retain and monetize

Luis von Ahn had already discovered this successful recipe in 2005. At the time, he was still a doctoral student and left other Internet users to observe and legend images in order to improve online research thanks to metadata. The same year, Google bought technology.

In 2007, Von Ahn had another lucrative idea. Still from Carnegie Mellon University, he launched Recaptcha. The objective was to take advantage of the lost time to retype the classic anti-robot Captcha safety codes.

The little owl’s “dad” therefore bet very early on the unpaid good will of subscribers. And that brought him big: his fortune rises (depending on the current state of the stock market) at around 1.5 billion dollars.

Here is what a Reddit user of this strategy appreciated by “freemium” service providers says:

This goes hand in hand with the significant increase this year of “in-app” purchases prices. Duolingo therefore intends to reach new profit spheres thanks to AI.

Give AI more and more importance

This strategy had already been drawn in 2023. In a long blog article, those responsible were at the time showed enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by the linguistic model of the house called “Birdbrain”.

Until recently, each exercise proposed by AI was then formulated, verified and translated by humans. But it is now AI alone that generates the exercises.

Last May, the big boss, rented for his visionary character, had suggested in the media that we could better organize the traditional school with AI than with human teachers.

The schools themselves would therefore serve in the future especially to supervise and monitor. However, the transmission of knowledge strictly speaking would however be largely ensured by machines.

Is a future dictated by AI really possible?

And who would that benefit from?

If we, as a company, invest more in AI than in real teachers, a boulevard would then open for Duolingo and the other companies of the kind of Silicon Valley.

However, we already know that this plan will not work. And that Duolingo would do better backing in the matter.

Let’s leave the word at the end to Evan Eddinger, longtime aficionado from Duolingo and Youtuber:

Up to you!

Do you regularly open Duolingo? What do you think of the content generated by AI and what other experiences have you had with the application?

Tell us while comments!

Sources:

(Translated and adapted by Valentine Zenker)