‘You just nuked the company in a day’: Duolingo announces it’s replacing people with AI and rightfully sees a mass exodus of users

Companies have yet to understand that people generally don’t like AI. While it can sometimes be convenient, it’s no replacement for actual humans. Duolingo is finding this out the hard way, and now years of built-up goodwill with users has come tumbling down.

Last month, Duolingo’s CEO announced that it would be phasing out human workers in favor of an “AI first” approach. What exactly was meant by this is unclear, but it seems as though the company intends to get rid of a majority of its staff in favor of robots. The statement, which was shared on LinkedIn, was rather dystopian, with AI even being used to help evaluate performance reviews.

The AI rollout has already begun with 148 AI-written courses being added to the app at the start of this month. Are they any good? Who knows, it doesn’t look like anyone’s interested in taking them.

Duolingo used to be cool

As far as brands go, Duolingo has often been seen as “one of the good ones.” Not only is it educational, but it makes learning another language fun. The company’s use of viral marketing stunts and funny TikTok videos, and other social media posts from the character of “Duo,” the owl, has endeared the language learning app to hundreds of millions of people.

Earlier this year, the company caught the attention of the internet with a genius marketing campaign, which saw them “kill off” Duo. Last year we also saw the owl get sick, which stirred some controversy and generated quite the buzz around the app. All this goes to show just how in touch with its audience the company was until recently. It also showed that people did actually care about the app and the mascot in a weird way.

But all of that is out the window now that the company has made the rather ill-judged decision to make the switch to AI

The internet responds

Judgment from netizens was swift and severe. On TikTok, people expressed their disgust, vowing to ditch the app. Some people had streaks that lasted hundreds of days go down the drain just to send the message that AI is not ok. They even recorded themselves deleting Duolingo just to drive it all home. One woman had a 1831-day streak, which is now gone.

TikTok user @fangirlmeegs explained, “As a language pathologist, I know that language learning needs the human component.” Other responses simply expressed shock at the sheer misstep this business decision clearly was.

The once beloved owl has seen a wave of hate these last couple of weeks, and it’s hard to feel even an ounce of sympathy. The fact is that using AI in place of humans is unethical and downright lazy. How the CEO of the company didn’t realize this would destroy Duolingo is astounding.