Duolingo met with significant backlash in April 2025 when CEO Louis von Ahn declared that he would only hire if that job couldn’t be done with AI.
The memo from which this controversial message came also contained inflammatory statements about how the app would “take occasional small hits on quality” and that the company would “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.”
While he walked back some of these statements later, it inspired many people to abandon the now AI-riddled language app in favor of alternatives.
The wrong conclusion to draw from this story is that AI-powered language apps are unpopular.
Duolingo’s callous approach sparked a backlash, but the underlying technology is technologically, if not morally, sound.
I booted up one of the most popular AI language apps, Speak, to see if AI really could teach us a language better than humans.
I’ve always felt alone learning a new language until I tried this language learning app
It was almost surreal to use an AI as my French-speaking partner
Speak is heavily inspired by its biggest competitor
Duolingo’s influence is strong here
I’ll discuss how the app starts you on your learning journey later in this article; right now, I want to point out how similar Speak is to Duolingo.
A significant factor in the latter app’s appeal is its gamification features. Users gain streaks, compete in leaderboards, and win awards.
While this approach has been criticized by many who point out that gamification takes precedence over actual learning, the theory of gamification is still sound. When we earn awards, we want to engage more; it’s as simple as that.
Speak dials back Duolingo’s excess to the core concepts I pointed out earlier. There are streaks (and streak freezes), leaderboards, and challenges with their own rewards. It’s all very familiar, and so is Speak’s course structure.
When you select a course and complete the introductory lesson, the app is revealed in full. Courses are structured linearly; complete one lesson to move on to the next.
There’s a vocabulary summary for review, and an AI tutor button (more on this later), but the structure is very familiar.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that Speak structures its lessons in a logical way rather than the unpredictable sentences used by Duolingo. Instead, Speak teaches you practical sentences you can use immediately.
So, how does all this translate into effective language learning? Pretty well, although there are problems.
Speak’s voice-driven learning is effective, but it gives you a false sense of mastery
It cannot identify basic pronunciation errors
After selecting your course, you’re treated to a video lesson from one of Speak’s instructors. This is a real person who runs you through speaking basic phrases. It’s a fun way to start, as you feel like you’ve made real progress within minutes of opening the app.
While there are exercises involving matching phrases and tapping on the correct phrase, the majority of my time with Speak involved, well, speaking!
I love this approach. Speaking a language is the best way to learn, and I was always frustrated by how Duolingo did not prioritize this crucial aspect of learning.
But after a few lessons, I began to get suspicious.
I had selected the Italian course, and my complete inability to roll my Rs meant I butchered the pronunciation of plenty of words. (Think Brad Pitt saying “Arrivederci” in Inglourious Basterds).
However, Speak continued to praise my speaking ability as if I had perfected it. This is the biggest problem with Speak.
I deliberately mispronounced phrases, added extra syllables, or even reversed the word order. But as long as what I said bore a vague similarity to the target, the app would mark it as correct.
While there should be some leniency, Speak does not identify crucial mistakes that need to be fixed early in the learning journey before they become habits.
This problem is one I expected would be solved with AI. But rather than using AI to improve our learning, Speak uses it to generate conversations that help you practice your language skills in a “real” setting.
Speak’s AI is useful, but it is mostly forgettable
It doesn’t do half of what I hoped it could
Speak’s two AI-powered features are Free Talk and AI Tutor. The former lets you create or select from a series of scenarios designed to test your speaking capabilities.
Each Free Talk lesson sets you three goals that you must achieve to complete the lesson. It doesn’t matter how you go about it, which lets the conversation flow somewhat naturally. This feature works reasonably well.
The chatbot is a tad too interactive for my liking, but it’s a great way to practice your speaking ability. It’s still too forgiving, but overall, it’s an effective learning method.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the AI Tutor.
According to Speak’s Play Store listing, AI Tutor gives you “real-time feedback on pronunciations, grammar, and much more.”
I tested this by asking the AI Tutor to help me practice my pronunciation of certain words. However, it merely gave me an AI-generated recording of that word.
When I repeated the word back, it praised my attempt (in Italian) and that was it. No matter how hard I tried, it refused to acknowledge that I was pronouncing the word incorrectly.
Speak is an effective language app, but it isn’t suited for mastery
I was impressed by how quickly I picked up words from Speak. It does an excellent job of teaching you words and phrases in a logical manner that you can build on for the next session.
However, its leniency means that it’s easy to adopt mistakes that would be picked up immediately by a human teacher.
I was hoping Speak’s AI tools would be capable of filling in the gaps a human teacher can, but in the end, the biggest lesson I learned from Speak is that if you want to learn a language, find a teacher, not an AI bot.
