Duolingo’s CEO said AI can’t yet match the work of the company’s artists and designers.
On Tuesday’s episode of the Rapid Response podcast, CEO Louis von Ahn said the team is trying to leverage AI as much as possible, but “we never want to compromise on quality.”
“For some things, AI is ready to do high-quality work, and for some things, it’s not at all,” he said. “We’re not going to sacrifice quality just to use AI.”
When podcast host Bob Safian asked where AI was still lacking, von Ahn pointed to design.
“For example, we employ a lot of artists and designers, and our apps are very sophisticated in terms of design,” he said. “We have never seen AI reach the level of creativity and sophistication of our top talent.”
Duolingo publicly embraces AI.
Last April, the company announced it would evaluate employee performance based in part on its use of AI. The company later rescinded the provision, and Von Ahn said the rule forced employees to use AI in unnecessary areas.
“I don’t think it was incorrect,” he said on an episode of Rapid Response about the criteria. He said that while most employees benefit from the use of AI, there are also projects and roles where AI may not be useful.
“Therefore, there was no need to blanketly state that we were going to evaluate the use of AI by our employees,” he added. “I deleted it.”
AI tools are spreading across the creative industries, with more companies using them for everything from marketing assets to product design.
Some companies, such as Kate Spade and Coach’s parent company Tapestry, say AI is already part of designers’ workflows.