Duolingo drama underscores the new corporate balancing act on AI hype
Katie Notopoulos
5 min read
Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
Duolingo is the latest company to spark a backlash over its CEO's excitement about AI.
Investors and Wall Street love hearing about companies' ambitious AI plans, but many customers hate it.
Ultimately, this may just be a messaging problem.
Imagine you're the CEO of a midsize to large consumer tech company. You announce that you're going all in on AI — you are launching AI features in your products, or maybe you're telling your employees they need to start using AI at their jobs more. Your investors love it. Your fellow CEOs applaud you. Thought leaders in Silicon Valley hail you. Wall Street loves it; your share price spikes.
But your customers? They haaaaaaaaate it.
You get destroyed on social media. People delete your app or vow to boycott your company.
You, imaginary CEO, would not be alone. Quite a few companies recently have dealt with this kind of blowback after announcing plans for AI use.
Duolingo is in the middle of this boondoggle. The language app's CEO, Luis von Ahn, posted a memo on LinkedIn last month describing plans to make the company "AI-first." He said the company would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle" and "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."
The backlash was harsh. Tweets, TikToks, and Reddit posts exploded in outrage. Duolingo has cultivated a big social presence with its meme-loving owl mascot, so the company was a prime target. One TikTok creator implored their fans not to allow Duolingo to return from being canceled.
As of Tuesday, Duolingo's social accounts had been wiped — no posts, no icon. Duolingo did not respond to a request for comment.
The idea that employees should learn to use AI is basically gospel now. Business leaders see that AI is the future and don't want to be left behind. But there are differences in degrees. Shopify, too, received some blowback after it announced a policy of mandatory AI fluency and said teams could hire new humans only if they proved AI couldn't do the job instead.
Audible recently announced it would offer AI narration for audiobooks. When I posted on Threads that I thought this would be useful (there are plenty of times I've wanted to read an older book that is available only in print and wished it had an audio version), I got absolutely ratioed into the heavens by people who (rightfully!) were aghast at the idea of replacing human voice actors with subpar AI bots. Several people told me they were planning to cancel their Audible subscriptions over this.
The main issues people have with AI are simple. The models were generally trained on songs, books, and art that were used without the owners' consent. AI threatens to replace human jobs. There's an environmental impact from the energy used to power AI. These are all simply facts. Worst of all, it's often just not very good at what it's supposed to do. There's a reason it's called "AI slop" and not "AI amazing, cool art."
It would be a mistake to wave off the anti-AI brigade as a bunch of Luddites or purists. Their concerns are legitimate. And for tech companies who are pushing this — the brigade includes customers. These are people who are happily using iPhones and apps like Duolingo to learn a second language, or pay for audiobooks, or listen to streaming music.
This is the tension: How do you, imaginary tech CEO, continue to impress your investors with how your company is at the bleeding edge of AI adoption, while avoiding getting shredded to bits by your customers on social media?
I asked Adam Brotman, the CEO of Forum3, a consulting firm that advises brands on how to adopt AI, and a coauthor of "AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand."
"Unlike previous tech shifts, generative AI brings unique challenges," Brotman said. "While these leaked memos are coming from an authentic passion around what this tech can do to drive productivity and innovation, in my opinion, even the most passionate leaders need to communicate a balanced approach in these memos; emphasizing 'responsible' AI use and how it augments their teams rather than replaces them. Declaring an 'AI-first' strategy should be about leveraging AI's power thoughtfully while remaining a people-first company."
It's not an impossible balancing act. I suggest a reasonable solution, which is: Don't shout about it. There's a middle path, where your company can go forward with AI tools without publishing a memo about it that states some (unrealistic in practice) rules about hiring because of AI.
Duolingo made people mad not because some of its engineers are using AI for coding but because the CEO made a grandiose statement about it — the kind that isn't going to go over well. This is a messaging problem. The kind that a friendly, human, comms person could solve.
