Duolingo reportedly cuts staff in AI shift

Online language-learning app, Duolingo, has reportedly cut approximately 10% of its contractors in a move towards adopting generative artificial intelligence (AI) to develop content.

This comes as the company looks to rely more heavily on AI.

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According to CNN, Duolingo let go of some contractors at the end of 2023 to make room for AI-related changes in how it generates and shares content. The company also reportedly said that no full-time employees were affected, and that it turned to “off-boarding” as a last resort when alternate roles for affected staff could not be found.

The report also added that not all of the layoffs were driven by technology.

According to a Q3 2023 shareholder letter by the company, the platform had 24.2 million daily active users at the time, with 5.8 million on paid subscription plans.

Duolingo will be increasing its use of AI to perform tasks such as creating sentences for courses, producing lists of acceptable translations, and reviewing user error reports to correct mistakes quicker, according to CNN.

With that said, the company reportedly said that humans will still be used to check AI-completed work. It explained that AI will be used to increase productivity and efficiency, to add new content, and improve its courses faster to cater to higher proficiency levels.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Duolingo for more information.

Duolingo has progressively been adopting AI on its platform, with the launch of Duolingo Max in March 2023. The subscription tier is powered by AI research company, OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology.

The new AI-driven features provide language learners with conversation practice and in-depth explanations on answers.

“AI accelerates our mission to make high quality education available to everyone in the world. The things that we can do now with the power of OpenAI’s technology are going to shape the future of education,” said Luis von Ahn, CEO and Co-founder of Duolingo, at the time.

He expressed confidence that AI would help to recreate the experience of a human tutor and scale it to everyone in the world. This move comes as the platform looks to make education more effective, affordable, and engaging. For example, the custom AI was able to help users find the right course level and tailored lessons, along with personalised feedback.

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