I’ve said this in Q&As and many meetings, but I want to make it official: Duolingo is going to be AI-first.
AI is already changing how work gets done. It’s not a question of if or when. It’s happening now. When there’s a shift this big, the worst thing you can do is wait. In 2012, we bet on mobile. While others were focused on mobile companion apps for websites, we decided to build mobile-first because we saw it was the future. That decision helped us win the 2013 iPhone App of the Year and unlocked the organic word-of-mouth growth that followed.
Betting on mobile made all the difference. We’re making a similar call now, and this time the platform shift is AI.
AI isn’t just a productivity boost. It helps us get closer to our mission. To teach well, we need to create a massive amount of content, and doing that manually doesn’t scale. One of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI. Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP.
AI also helps us build features like Video Call that were impossible to build before. For the first time ever, teaching as well as the best human tutors is within our reach.
Being AI-first means we will need to rethink much of how we work. Making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won’t get us there. In many cases, we’ll need to start from scratch. We’re not going to rebuild everything overnight, and some things-like getting AI to understand our codebase-will take time. However, we can’t wait until the technology is 100% perfect. We’d rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment.
We’ll be rolling out a few constructive constraints to help guide this shift:
We’ll gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle
AI use will be part of what we look for in hiring
AI use will be part of what we evaluate in performance reviews
Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work
Most functions will have specific initiatives to fundamentally change how they work
All of this said, Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees. This isn’t about replacing Duos with AI. It’s about removing bottlenecks so we can do more with the outstanding Duos we already have. We want you to focus on creative work and real problems, not repetitive tasks. We’re going to support you with more training, mentorship, and tooling for AI in your function.
Change can be scary, but I’m confident this will be a great step for Duolingo. It will help us better deliver on our mission — and for Duos, it means staying ahead of the curve in using this technology to get things done.
–Luis
