Duolingo CEO says his AI-first memo was taken out of context

Duolingo’s chief executive, Luis von Ahn, addressed this year’s backlash over the company’s plan to become an AI-first company, saying the controversy largely stemmed from a lack of context rather than a change in philosophy.

He explained that the directive wasn’t contentious inside the company, but outside observers assumed it was about maximizing profit or replacing people. Von Ahn pushed back on that idea, noting that the intent was not to eliminate human roles.

“Internally, this was not controversial… Some people assume that it’s just for profit, or that we’re trying to lay off humans. That was not the intent at all.”

Von Ahn emphasized that Duolingo has never laid off full-time employees and has no plans to do so. He acknowledged that the contractor workforce has changed over time, saying it has fluctuated based on needs since the beginning—sometimes going down, sometimes up.

Despite public criticism of the AI-first approach, the reaction doesn’t appear to have dented business performance. If anything, von Ahn remains bullish on AI’s potential across the product, with teams dedicating Friday mornings to hands-on experiments and prototypes.

“It’s a bad acronym—f-r-A-I-days,” he joked. “I don’t know how to pronounce it.”

The takeaway: Duolingo is pressing ahead with AI-driven features and workflows while maintaining its full-time workforce, using targeted contractor capacity as demand shifts and carving out time each week to explore new AI ideas.