Duolingo we don’t want your AI slop 🤖
The one where Duolingo loses their audience and possibly their business(?!) in real time! 🦉👍
Duolingo, a popular language learning app, recently announced they’ll be an “AI First” company…which means out with humans and in with AI. 🤖
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But as 2025 progresses it’s ESPECIALLY hard to avoid the AI slop being posted on every social media site, and in some cases used in place of professional creatives.🤦♀️ As AI is added to everything, people are feeling burnt out and over the lack of human touch that AI art and information provide.. Every app, search engine, social media platform and even your normal work day has some form of AI available.
Creativity has a special human quality that AI can’t match.
That’s why people hate ChatGPT LinkedIn posts. AI takes from different things human made art to create some truly weird (usually plain bad) art..aka it creates SLOP. And on top of that generative AI takes up a LOT of our water and electricity. 🤦♀️
So watching a large, and popular, company like Duolingo, who built a brand on being funny and human (in an owl costume, but human nonetheless) just delivered a solid gut punch to their audiences.. Leaving people saying “we liked the human aspect, bye!” 👋
But don’t take it from us, here are some great takes from TikTok creators on why Duolingo’s CEO has maaaajorly fcked up:
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I guess the question now is…will Duolingo keep moving with this “AI forward” strategy, or will they see that it’s not what their audience wants, and pivot?? This could be make or break for Duolingo, and as early adopters (along with Shopify) of the “AI forward” concept, it’ll have an impact on how businesses use AI. It’ll be interesting to see it play out over time.
What do you think of the “AI Forward” strategy? Does Duolingo need AI to help them thrive or is this a total miss??
theBlogStack’s Substack Recs 👇
📰 Is AI killing art? by
📰 Free Your Brain From Marketing Burnout by
📰 Stories of Resistance: Reading Palestinian Authors by
To see more of what we’re reading, check out our notes where we repost quotes and stories from our favorite Substacks.
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