Going ‘AI first’ backfires on Duolingo and Klarna

Artificial intelligence might be the future of the workplace, but companies that are trying to get a head start on that future are running into all sorts of problems.

Klarna and Duloingo have been some of the poster children for the “AI-first” workplace. Two years ago, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski announced he wanted his company to be the “favorite guinea pig” of OpenAI, instituting a hiring freeze and replacing as many workers as possible with AI systems. Last month, Duolingo announced an AI-first shift, saying it would stop using contractors to do work AI can handle and only increase head count when teams have maximized all possible automation.

Klarna, while still investing in AI, seems to have renewed appreciation for the human touch. And Duolingo is finding itself under attack on social media for its decision.

Klarna’s Siemiatkowski tells Bloomberg the fintech company is about to go on a hiring spree in order to ensure customers will always have the option to speak to a live representative. The company did not say how many people it plans to add, but Siemiatkowski indicated Klarna would look at students and rural areas to boost its workforce.

Last year, Klarna, in an announcement, said AI was doing the work of 700 customer service agents. Now it’s focusing on adding human connections.

“As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” Siemiatkowski said. “Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.” But Klarna says it is still enthusiastic about AI.

Duolingo’s AI-first push is much newer, and there have been no policy reversals on its part as of yet. But the company is facing a tsunami of pushback from the general public on social media after announcing the move, particularly on TikTok.

The top comments on virtually every recent post have nothing to do with the video or the company—and everything to do with the company’s embrace of AI.

For example, a Duolingo TikTok video jumping on board the “Mama, may I have a cookie” trend saw replies like “Mama, may I have real people running the company 💔” (with 69,000 likes) and “How about NO ai, keep your employees.” Another video that tied into the How to Train Your Dragon character Hiccup brought comments like “Was firing all your employees and replacing them with AI also a hiccup?”

Other comments are more serious: “Using AI is disgusting,” wrote one user. “Language learning should be pioneered by PEOPLE. By making this decision, Duolingo is actively harming the environment, their customers, and employees when it hurts the most.”

Another wrote: “What kind of audience do you think you’ve built that it’s okay to go ‘AI first.’ We don’t want AI, we want real people doing good work. Goodbye, Duo. If this is the way you’re going, you wont be missed.”

Others claimed to have deleted the app: “Deleted Duolingo last week. A 650+ day streak never felt so meaningless once I saw the news.”

Duolingo says much of that feedback is coming from people who don’t understand what AI-first means. “A lot of the feedback we’ve seen comes from a place of passion for Duolingo, which we really appreciate,” a representative told Fast Company. “To clarify, AI isn’t replacing our learning experts—it’s a tool they use to make Duolingo better. Everything we create with AI is guided by our team of learning design experts. . . . We’re committed to using AI with human oversight, to help us deliver on our mission to make the best education in the world available to everyone.”

Companies, in general, remain excited about the potential cost savings of AI, sometimes for good reason. Duolingo’s stock is at an all-time high, and the company recently raised its sales forecast for 2025. A study by the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that 40% of employers expect to reduce their workforce and hand over automated tasks to the technology. As bullish as executives might be, however, that excitement has not made its way into the consumer space.

Almost half of the Generation Z job hunters told the WEF they believed AI has reduced the value of their college education. And researchers at Harvard University say the technology is still threatening to people.

“From early on in life, humans strive to manage their surroundings to achieve their goals. So they’re naturally reluctant to adopt innovations that seem to reduce their control over a situation,” wrote Julian De Freitas, an assistant professor in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. “The possibility that AI tools might completely take over tasks previously handled by humans, rather than just assist with them, stirs up deep concerns and worries.”

Update, May 12, 2025: This article has been updated with comments from Klarna and Duolingo.