Duolingo Becomes An AI-First Company, Replacing Contractors With AI

Duolingo announced this Monday that it has officially become an “AI-first” company, gradually replacing contractors with AI capable of handling their work. The company’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, sent an email to employees that was later shared on Duolingo’s LinkedIn account.

According to the post, the new measures reflect the fast pace of AI development and the need to adopt emerging technologies quickly. Von Ahn compared the current AI wave to the mobile wave of 2012.

“In 2012, we bet on mobile,” wrote von Ahn. “While others were focused on mobile companion apps for websites, we decided to build mobile-first because we saw it was the future.”

von Ahn explained that they need to develop a “massive amount of content” and that by using AI, they’ve been able to do work that would have taken decades to do manually, including new features like the AI-powered feature Video Call that allows users to interact in real-life conversations with one of Duolingo’s animated characters. “For the first time ever, teaching as well as the best human tutors is within our reach,” wrote the CEO.

Duolingo will be making major changes, including gradually letting go of contractors if the work can be done with AI, rethinking how they work, and including more automation, even if the technology isn’t as good as expected. “We can’t wait until the technology is 100% perfect,” states the email and highlights the urgency for new measures.

“Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees,” wrote von Ahn. “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.”

First Shopify.

Now Duolingo.

If you’re a “digital native business” (ie born in the cloud, born on mobile – think Pinterest, Airbnb, Stripe) and haven’t gotten the memo, here is the literal memo. pic.twitter.com/0dFhgJJLFP

— Allie K. Miller (@alliekmiller) April 28, 2025

Just a few days ago, Shopify’s CEO also announced that they will prioritize AI and that they won’t hire new employees unless it can be proved that AI can’t do it.