Why Has Duolingo Has Rolled Back its AI Workforce Review?

Following internal concerns over the mandatory adoption of AI by the workforce, Duolingo has announced plans to roll back use of the technology in its performance review policy.

Having previously stated the company would be “AI-first” and that employees would be assessed on their AI use in 2025, CEO Luis von Ahn has since said that the company no longer intends to uphold the policy.

Speaking on the Silicon Valley Girl podcast, Luis stated that the company reconsidered its approach after employees began questioning the reasoning behind the decision.

“At the end, we backtracked, and we said, ‘No. Look, the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as possible,” Luis commented. 

A lot of times AI can help you with that. But if it can’t, I’m not going to force you to do that.”

Duolingo’s approach diverges from many other companies across industries who are exploring ways to incentivise employee AI use. 

A notable example of this is Meta’s leaderboard of the top 250 AI token users companywide, which allowed workers to monitor how much AI their colleagues were using. The board was removed by employees after two days of use, following the external sharing of its data.

AI for employee empowerment

Despite the discontinuation of the company’s AI performance review process, Duolingo has not completely withdrawn AI from areas it believes the technology increases productivity, such as its 2020 machine learning model, Birdbrain.

In the same announcement as the company’s original plans to enforce AI use by employees, Duolingo also stated it planned to cut down the use of contractors in any job roles that could be replaced by AI.

Luis added that the company’s hiring process is the same as it was before the rise of AI and that AI is not seen as a replacement for workers but a way of empowering those who use it.

“The reality is it’s not yet the case that AI is better at coding than humans. I think you still really need engineers, and you’re going to need them for a long time,” he said on the same podcast.

He added that AI-written code is difficult to debug and not a reliable method of writing stories for the programme.

A company spokesperson furthered Luis’s point in an interview with Fortune, adding: “Duolingo has used AI for years to personalise learning and expand access. Technology is core to how we build. That includes how we think about AI’s role across our teams.

 “Our teams’ work depends on human judgment, expertise, and creativity. AI tools assist with that work; they don’t make decisions or replace the people building Duolingo. What drives every decision we make is what’s best for learners.”

Allowing for more creative and strategic work

The announcement of the AI review policy sparked backlash with users and employees, who raised concerns after Luis announced the platform was moving toward a technology-led restructuring of its workforce in a post on LinkedIn.

A decision which saw Duolingo’s TikTok and Instagram accounts flooded with negative feedback from users and resulted in the company temporarily deleting all its content on both platforms, both of which have amassed millions of followers.

“AI isn’t just a productivity boost – it helps us get closer to our mission,” Luis said in a 2025 company statement, in which he discussed how scaling content manually was no longer feasible and that without automation, producing educational material could take years.

Despite the proposed changes last year, Duolingo stated that the goal of integrating AI wasn’t to replace employees but to free them from repetitive tasks and allow for more creative and strategic work.

Duolingo’s move to suspend its AI performance review comes amid a trend of companies across all industries imposing strict guidelines on the use of AI. 

Large tech companies like Meta, for example, are planning to establish policies like employee AI usage targets, a potential move that would reflect Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to make the company “AI-native,” according to a report by Business Insider.