Duolingo announced on Wednesday that it beat its quarterly revenue estimates, even though the company faced widespread backlash for choosing to embrace generative AI over human workers. Duolingo stock rose almost 30% on the news.

In April, CEO Luis von Ahn shared that Duolingo would become an “AI-first” company, phasing out its use of contract workers. He also discouraged teams from hiring more employees, unless if the team is unable to automate more of its work. With the use of generative AI, Duolingo introduced 148 new language courses, more than doubling its previous offerings.

“Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners,” von Ahn wrote at the time. “We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP.”

While some Duolingo users have argued t

See Full Page