#duolingo AI

[teddyshmeddy]

google said foxes are an owls natural predator btw

[smallsinger5901]

fighting for my life rn in duolingos instagram comment section after calling them out for firing 10% of their translators and replacing them with AI on their latest post

[sharky-the-idiot]

WAIT WAIT WAIT WHAT'S THIS ABOUT DUOLINGO SWITCHING TO AI??????

[for anybody unaware the context is that I said I'd know more French if Duolingo didn't switch to ai on my Rococo account]

But yeah, you didn't know? Didn't duolingo fired their translators and switch to ai? I should probably reblog w the post linked but I remember seeing it somewhere

[miaowmelodie]

Does anyone know of free apps similar to Duolingo (but non ai operated) that teach swedish?

[cryptablog]

And I just hit mt 365 day streak too.

Welp when y'all give the go ahead I'll delete it.

stand with the opressed never the opressor

[jthehumanbeing]

I do want to chime in as somehow who has been using Duolingo to learn a second language since the US education system radically failed to do this. As someone who knows multiple people going for terminal degrees which require multiple languages, and are supplementing the (poor) language classes they’re taking through their universities via Duolingo.

If you go to settings, there’s a feedback section that will allow you to send an email directly to Duolingo. Not everyone is going to know that they started using AI instead of real translators, so the only way they’ll know people are disgruntled is if we tell them. This is what my email is going to say:

To whom it may concern,

I am a longtime user of Duolingo, and have been very happy with the quality of the app and the program up until now. It has come to my attention that there have been mass layoffs of Duolingo staff in favor of moving to an AI based learning system. I find this to be a problem, as language is something that is fluid and complicated, something that an algorithmic program would struggle to replicate. Already there have been people noticing more incorrect solutions to problems, incorrect pronunciations, and other errors in their learning since the implementation of the new AI system.

Since I have been using Duolingo for so long, I would hate to have to switch programs. However, for me, the use of AI over human translators is something I cannot overlook. If Duolingo continues down this path of only using AI, I will have no choice but to look elsewhere for language learning solutions. For now I have canceled my Duolingo super, but should these concerns not be addressed I will likely cease using the app entirely and delete my account.

Sincerely,

J

Heads up to not use Duolingo or to cease using it

In December 2023 they laid off a huge percentage of their translation teams, replacing them with ai and having the remaining members review the ai translations to make sure the translations are “acceptable” (Note how they use the world acceptable and not accurate)

Link to the tweet that informed me of this:

https://x.com/rahll/status/1744234385891594380?s=46&t=a5vK0RLlkgqk-CTqc0Gvvw

If you’re a current user prepare for an uptick in translations errors as I’ve already seen people in the comments say they’ve noticed

[haley-harrison]

DUOLINGO?!?!?!

[good-advice-ganondorf]

[frostwinddandelion]

[selfloathingextraordinaire]

With what's happened with Duolingo, I'm looking for a new language app, but need some help.

Is there a Japanese language app that is:

Great for people with learning disabilities (my brain struggles with language and has to learn it very slowly)

Kid friendly

Colorful

I've seen a bunch of posts with all these recommendations, but it's super overwhelming and I have no idea where to start.

[inkedmyths]

Man deleting Duolingo REALLY sucks. I felt like I'd built up a nice little learning habit, yknow? And ofc the whole "breaking the streak" feels bad. But there's no point if they're just going to replace it with AI.

[britcision]

In today’s round of “Generative AI does not do the things you think it does”

Paypal has completely fucked their customer service interface by replacing any… y’know… email tech support options with a Message Center AI

Now

I invite you to pause for 30 seconds and think of the simplest, most basic, least plausible way an AI could possibly fuck up something like filing a bug report

Just give it a minute

The simplest, most ridiculous way to fuck it up

Hold it in your mind

Ready?

The LANGUAGE

It changed the language in the browser to Spanish

And then to German, and addressed me as Dr Hellmut

As thrilled as I am to participate in identity fraud and obtain a degree, doing it in German isn’t ideal given that I do not speak German

I fear this will make it hard to be convincing

It also didn’t solve my problem (“I would like to submit a bug report”) but I genuinely did not expect it could fuck up the language we were speaking

Generative AI out here truly testing the boundaries of what we thought was possible by fucking up on whole new fundamental levels

[akaessi]

Duolingo's annoying and outlandish marketing scheme is supposed to distract you from the fact that they are routinely utilizing AI to structure/moderate/and otherwise create language lessons.

For years, language experts and learners have been requesting that the app include languages such as Icelandic and other languages with relatively low populations of native speakers. additionally, while Duolingo has been credited with "playing a key role in preserving indigenous languages," they have yet to fulfill their promises of adding additional at-risk languages. Specifically,  Yucatec and K’iche, which the app faced "setbacks for." Even worse, in my opinion, is the fact that they are utilizing AI to create language courses in Navajo and Hawaiian.

The ethics of using AI to model and create indigenous languages cannot be ignored. What are their systems siphoning from? Language revitalization without a community being involved and credited is language theft and colonization. (I can't even get into the environmental impact of AI).

Instead of working with more language experts, hiring linguists, and spending more on their language programs, more and more money is being poured into their marketing. While they have a heavy team of computational and theoretical linguists, there seem to be fewer and fewer language experts and social linguists involved.

Their research section has not had a publication listed since 2021. Another research site Duolingo hosts on the efficacy of Duolingo has publications as recently as 2024, but only a total of 5 publications (2021-2024) listed were peer-reviewed and only 2 additional publications were independent research reports (2022 & 2023). The remaining 9 publications were Duolingo internal research reports. So, while a major marketing feature of the app is the "science backed, researched based, approach" there is much to be desired from their research setting. Additionally, the manner on how they personally determine efficacy in their own reports, as written in this blog post, has an insufficient dataset.

And while they openly share their datasets derived from Duolingo users, there are no clear bibliographies for individual language courses. What datasets are their curriculum creators using? And what curriculum creators do they even have left considering their massive layoffs of their translations team (10%) and the remaining translators being tasked with editing AI content?

Duo can be run over by a goddamn cybertruck but god forbid the app actually spend any money on the language programs you're playing with.

[ghostjelliess]

Had to get serious with a .3 mm pen cus the .5 jelly rolls smudged too much 😭 now I get why Muji pens are like that.

Learning essential phrases, thanks Duo! 🙏

Just curious how it translates! It worked!

Oh, I wonder how my worksheets translate. It will look funny, like: soup soup soup soup soup soup...

Ope... 👀 Should have stayed curious. 😒

[santaclaushohoho1]

"oh hey i wonder what's going on with Duolingo, the tag is trending, i bet its more funny twee-"

[3rdexistence]

For everyone recommending Busuu as an alternative for Duolingo: stop.

It uses AI voices (as in literally the "sigma chad guy voice used on TikTok).

Plus, today I recieved a deepfake video on a listening exercise (speakers' facial expressions didn't match their tone or what they were saying, those unnatural circular head movements that most deepfake videos do, very periodic blinking and arm movement, eye level never changes).

Additionally, I'm pretty sure that the German course to learn Dutch is just a translation of the English version, because the German instructions were often weird/unnecessary/explaining stuff you wouldn't have to explain to a German speaker but to an English speaker.

Also on some translations they straight-up forgot to change the English translation to a German one.

At this point it just feels like we have to abandon the concept of language learning apps completely because they're all starting to use AI (and AI does *not* understand language).

tldr: Busuu is just as bad as Duolingo because it uses AI translations, voices, and videos