With the recent announcement of Duolingo’s transition to AI, controversy has been caused, with the majority agreeing that this is the worst thing the company could have done, getting rid of its individuality and ruining its reputation.
Duolingo is a language learning app that offers over 40 languages and has been around since 2012, helping thousands across the world pick up new languages. In the process it has become a major pop culture phenomenon.
Duolingo’s mascot, a cute little parrot named Dou, has been memed back and forth. In the beginning, the memes the internet came up with were rather sinister in nature, often joking that Dou would come to users’ homes and kidnap their families if they didn’t finish their Spanish lesson. Thankfully, in recent years, it’s shifted to a much more wholesome approach, with videos of Dou hugging employees and encouraging users to continue learning new languages.
For a long time, Duolingo was viewed very positively by the public, that was until April 28, 2025, when the company announced that duolingo would be changing their curriculum and instead take a “AI first” approach. They are replacing their human made language algorithms with AI.
Upon hearing this news, the internet was sent into a frenzy. The majority of individuals were completely against this new approach, with some even going as far as to boycott Duolingo completely, including deleting the app.
Sophomore Rowan Davidson said, “I think it stupid because you’re replacing actual people who have been speaking a language for years with a robot. It’s just spewing out stuff it’s been fed to from an algorithm. AI in general is taking away people’s ability to think for themselves and making our generation lazy because all we want to do is fry our brain cells on TikTok.”
Rowan’s perspective provides a deep insight into the society we are slowly progressing into. Back during Covid, if someone was lazy and didn’t want to do their homework and instead wanted to look up the answers, it wasn’t as simple as just being told the answer. Oftentimes Google would completely break it down and explain how to solve it.
In addition, often actual human tutors provided their insights, which was convenient if your learning style didn’t align with that of your teachers. With AI however, this has completely changed. Nowadays you can command an AI to tell you the answer as soon as possible and then move on, which in turn is making our generation stupider, removing our essential ability to think for ourselves.
Duolingo AI’s first approach is only the beginning of the AI takeover in our society. While right now, it might be affecting language learning apps and creating horrible AI art images, there’s no denying its potential to grow. While AI can be a useful tool, such as in cases of detecting cancer, as AI can see it better than a human, it’s clear that AI should be take the inconvenient jobs, such as washing dishes or taking out the trash, not jobs such as art or writing in which human skill, passion and creativity are essential.
