Duolingo announced Wednesday that it had beat its quarterly estimates on income, even if the company faced a generalized reaction for having chosen to embrace the generator compared to human workers. Duolingo’s shares have increased by almost 30% to the news.
In April, CEO Luis von Ahn shared that Duolingo would become an “A-STIF” company, assuming its use of contract workers. He also discouraged teams from hiring more employees, unless the team is unable to automate their work more. With the use of generative AI, Duolingo introduced 148 new language courses, more than double its previous offers.
“Without AI, we would need decades to evolve our content to more learners,” wrote Von Ahn at the time. “We owe our learners to get this content to them as soon as possible.”
While some Duolingo users have argued that these AI features aggravate the application, the financial measures of the company tell a different story. Now, the company plans to generate more than a billion dollars in revenues this year, and daily active users have increased 40% in annual sliding. Growth is significant but falls into the drop in estimates of the growth company between 40% and 45%, which an investor brought to Von Ahn when calling on Wednesday.
“The reason we came [in] Towards the lower end was because I said things on the AI, and I did not give enough context. Because of this, we have obtained a backlash on social networks, “said Von Ahn.” The most important thing is that we wanted to make the feeling about our positive social media. We have stopped publishing upset messages and started publishing things that would make our feeling more positive. It worked.
On Tiktok, the best comments on Duolingo videos often remain criticism of the company’s AI approach. Sarcastic commentators will ask if videos with several people are made with AI, to which Duolingo will answer: “No. Made by our big team! ”
But even if the public feeling towards Duolingo has changed, its net profit has not … and from the point of view of the company, that’s what matters.
