Duolingo has fired human translators in favour of using AI, as part of a shift to artificial intelligence that began in earnest almost a year ago.
The company behind the most famous language learning app has laid off 10% of its contractors, according to a Bloomberg report. Duolingo said these staff were at the end of their contracts, which were then not renewed.
“We just no longer need as many people to do the type of work some of these contractors were doing,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Part of that could be attributed to AI.”
This move has led to a slew of Duolingo users saying they plan to cancel their subscriptions on X and Reddit.
“I am all for AI supporting humans but i’m not going to pay for my subscription to help them put more people out of a job,” wrote Reddit user Rlokan.
This is the fallout of a series of changes that occurred in 2023, ones that make Duolingo a more streamlined and perhaps cost-effective platform to maintain.
In February 2023 Duolingo announced the closure of its discussions boards, which were shuttered in March. Duolingo Max was announced on March 14 as part of a partnership with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
Max is a £19.99 a month subscription that lets you role-play chat with AI characters. And you can ask the Duolingo owl questions about learning languages, answered through AI.
Both human translation and interaction between Duolingo users have been replaced by AI.
The cessation of the use of these contractors was brought to light by Reddit user No_Comb_4582, who posted what they claim to be an “exit survey” email from the company.
“I worked there for five years. Our team had four core members and two of us got the boot. The two who remained will just review AI content to make sure it’s acceptable,” they wrote in a Reddit thread.
Language translation is one of the many job types at risk from AI adoption but AI is frequently unable to pick up on the nuances a professional human translator may notice. And matters get worse if the AI's output isn't properly monitored.
This played out in a similar story from September 2023, when tech website Gizmodo's owner, G/O Media, fired the staff of the Spanish language team in favour of using AI translation, prompting a Futurism article detailing numerous formatting, grammatical and translation errors.
