The Backlash Against Duolingo Going 'AI-First' Didn't Even Matter

Duolingo's decision to go 'AI-first' sparked backlash from users, but the company's second quarter earnings result tell a different story. Quarterly revenue exceeded expectations, stock surged nearly 30%, and daily active users grew 40% year-over-year. TechCrunch reports: Now the company anticipates making over $1 billion in revenue this year, and daily active users have grown 40% year-over-year. The growth is significant but falls in the lower range of the company's estimates of growing between 40% and 45%, which an investor brought up to [CEO Luis von Ahn] on Wednesday's quarterly earnings call.
'The reason we came [in] towards the lower end was because I said some stuff about AI, and I didn't give enough context. Because of that, we got some backlash on social media,' von Ahn said. 'The most important thing is we wanted to make the sentiment on our social media positive. We stopped posting edgy posts and started posting things that would get our sentiment more positive. That has worked.'

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