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“Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”
That’s what Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn probably wanted to say as they’d filmed him, held “hostage” by his own social media team, for an angry grilling on TikTok.
What happens when you publicly proclaim an “AI-first” corporate policy — and then face a massive, potentially brand-killing backlash?
What can you do in response?
And are there any valuable management lessons to be learned from surveying the spectacular aftermath today…?
It Started on LinkedIn
Duolingo is undeniably a giant among language-learning apps. With over 113 million monthly active users, the company is listed on NASDAQ and, on May 1, announced glowing quarterly results, with 10 million paying subscribers bringing in 38% more revenue than the same quarter in 2024. Duolingo’s stock shot up overnight, soaring 31% in the month of May, 85% in 10 weeks, and 167% over the last year.
Screenshot from Google’s one-year Market Summary for Duolingo
Then on LinkedIn, Duolingo shared an email from the CEO about the company’s new direction. “Just like how betting on mobile in 2012 made all the difference, we’re making a similar call now,” CEO von Ahn wrote. “This time the platform shift is AI.”
While stressing they care deeply about their employees, von Ahn said AI is changing work, and “It’s not a question of if or when. It’s happening now.”
But it was probably his promise of an “AI-first” company that set people off.
Especially since it came from a green cartoon owl…
‘AI-First Means People Come Last!’
von Ahn had shared specifics. A bulleted list included “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle,” and warned even new employees would now only be approved if that work couldn’t be automated. How much people use AI would become a factor in hiring decisions — and in performance reviews.
Furthermore, most roles at the company would see related initiatives that “fundamentally change how they work”.
However, the post that concluded with “I’m confident this will be a great step for Duolingo” was met with over 1,000 mostly angry comments, including “Ending my subscription today and deleting the app immediately!”
- “AI first means real people come last!”
- “The audacity to claim you care about your employees. Shameless.”
- “These aren’t just disgusting anti worker practices, this is blatantly anti human.”
Although, to be fair, some of those angry comments were written in a foreign language…
Evan Griffiths, an engineer at FINBOURNE Technology, expressed his feelings with a GIF of Star Trek’s Captain Picard expressing his disbelief at the “cringe” post and the inevitable bad will that would follow.
As one user put it: “Y’all can read dozens of languages but clearly not the room.”
“I think I messed up sending that email,” von Ahn would say later.
But he’d be saying it to a mock kidnapper in a green, three-eyed owl mask…
Damage Control
By May 18, Duolingo had removed all its posts on TikTok (where it had 16.8 million followers) and also all its posts on Instagram (where it 4.6 million followers). Both accounts were “flooded with negative feedback,” according to Fast Company.
But Duolingo had always enjoyed popularity for its unpredictable videos on social media — so they tried a trick play…
A new video appeared claiming to be from Duolingo’s disgruntled social media team. “I’ve had it with the CEOs and those in power…! Everything came crashing down with one single post about AI!”
@duolingoDUOLINGO WAS NEVER FUNNY. WE WERE.
Ranting that they’d changed all the passwords and taken over the accounts, this masked man in a hoodie yelled “We can’t just move on and pretend that everything is fine. It isn’t…!” Although the strangest thing was his mask. It was the green Duolingo owl — but now modified into a three-eyed freak (presumably in a kind of symbolic protest).
Fast Company called the video “a half-baked rush response to a very real issue,” warning sternly that “this is something Duolingo can’t cute-post its way out of.”
And then Duolingo posted another video. “I’m making the man who caused this mess accountable for his behavior,” says the angry man in the green mutant owl mask, saying he’s now demanding answers from CEO Luis von Ahn.
“I wanna make this right,” says von Ahn in the video…
But this was, of course, still an attempt at damage control. The first question wasn’t “Are you replacing contractors with AI?” but — setting a much lower bar — “Are there going to be any humans left at this company?” (To which the answer was yes.)
Instead of “humans” von Ahn used the word “employees” while crediting them for the success of both Duolingo’s app and its social media presence. (“So we’re going to continue having employees,” von Ahn said — which is probably better than a strict no-humans policy…)
“And not only that, we’re actually going to be hiring more employees.” von Ahn was vague on details, and his LinkedIn memo clearly said hiring humans would be a last resort. (“Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work…”) Later, von Ahn clarified on LinkedIn that Duolingo was “continuing to hire at the same speed as before.” So he went as far as to promise no increase in their rate of human hiring — but also, no decrease…
Yet what’s most telling is the next question — “How do we know that these aren’t just empty promises?”
von Ahn seemed to think that the least disingenuous answer to the question was: “Honestly, I don’t really know what’s going to happen.”
Aftermath
Maybe it’s just the hard, cold truth. “AI is a fundamental shift. It’s going to change how we all do work — including me…” von Ahn admitted in the video. “But I want us, as a company, to have our workforce prepared by really knowing how to use AI so that we can be more efficient with it.”
Would some moment-defining wisdom come from the man in the three-eyed owl mutant mask? “We all know that in terms of automation, CEOs should be the first to go,” he’d asked at one point…
Duolingo’s stock price sailed through the entire episode unscathed. But von Ahn never really addressed that anxious, epochal uncertainty of his (human) employees, other than by saying AI would also be changing the way he works…
Von Ahn did argue that this AI-first initiative to increase AI-generated content would create more Duolingo products — for humans — and would increase the in-house productivity of Duolingo’s (AI-assisted but human) employees. When asked how an “AI-first” initiative delivers the human-to-human connection that’s at the heart of all languages, von Ahn said AI “will allow us to reach more people, and to teach more people.” He pointed out their first 100 language-learning courses took 10 years to develop, but “now in under a year, with the help of AI — and of course with humans reviewing all the work — we were able to release another 100 courses.”
What’s happening on Duolingo’s social media feeds now? There are still some angry comments on their videos. (Like “EVERYONE LISTEN UP!!!! — starting from today, we are gonna start ignoring Duolingo. We will not like the video it posts, or view it.”)
So, it’s not clear whether their “take-the-CEO-hostage” strategy is working… Before May, the company’s TikTok videos routinely scored millions of viewers, with even the lowest performers achieving six-figure view counts. But now since its “hostage” video, only one of its six new videos reached 3.8 million views — with the rest stuck down in the low six figures.
Three weeks after his fateful LinkedIn post, von Ahn tried again — he returned again to LinkedIn. But what was there to say about an AI-first initiative that could sound positive instead of negative?
Von Ahn wrote that he was encouraging his team to embrace a new technology — to be curious and not fearful. Duolingo wants them feeling “empowered and prepared,” and — so that everyone can get an understanding of AI’s capabilities and limitations — they’d provide workshops and special AI advisory councils. Why, they were even “carving out dedicated experimentation time to help all our teams learn and adapt.”
In a nod to its increased output, he calls AI “a tool to accelerate what we do”. And he seemed to want to say: isn’t it larger than that? “People work at Duolingo because they want to solve big problems to improve education… Our mission isn’t changing, but the tools we use to build new things will change. I remain committed to leading Duolingo in a way that is consistent with our mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.”
Is von Ahn just secretly worried that his user base could leave Duolingo for ChatGPT? Last year’s annual report had included this in its standard “Risk Factors Summary”.
“The online language learning industry is highly competitive, with low switching costs and a consistent stream of new products and entrants, and innovation by our competitors may disrupt our business.”
Von Ahn’s newest LinkedIn post also hints at this possibility as a reason for encouraging his team to embrace new technology: so that when it comes to AI (and the “uncertainty” it brings), “we can stay ahead of it and remain in control of our own product and our mission.”
But AI will also save him in money. Von Ahn’s 1Q shareholder’s letter predicts a 2% jump in profitability by Q3 “as we expect to realize AI cost efficiencies” (as well as spending a smaller percentage of their revenue on marketing). (And speaking of increasing profitability, the letter predicts “an even more meaningful expansion in Q4.”)
So if the medium is the message, what’s the lesson to be learned from a social media campaign where a company’s CEO is taken hostage by a man in a three-eyed owl mask?
Fortune magazine calls it “the latest evidence that ‘AI-first’ tends to be a concept with much more appeal to investors and managers than most regular people.”
Or, as comedian Josh Johnson pointed out in a recent monologue, “You could have said customer-first. You could have said teacher-first.
“And you could have not said anything.”
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