I wouldn’t normally care about a Duolingo earnings call. However, tomorrow’s quarterly call has my interest.

Three months ago is when Luis Von Ahn fast followed Tobi at Spotify, declaring that Duolingo would be “AI-first.” If you actually read the announcement, it was milquetoast. But, communication is perception.

The youth that Duolingo cultivated as a consumer base was pissed.

So what did they perceive?

Zoom out for a minute to some macro stuff.

The non-ticker tape economy has seen its margins eroded in what Andrew Milgram calls a hollowing out of the middle.

Everyone is seeing their individual spending power erode, and you don’t have to look far to see many individuals straight up struggling.

Yet, generative AI is booming putting an otherwise stagnant economy on its back. Yet the rhetoric from the people heading the labs who are making the AI is to expect a white collar bloodbath. Not exactly inspiring for anyone outside of the capital class.

So if you’re a consumer, maybe you’ve been laid off recently and your favorite language learning app says it’s going to be “AI-first.” You are hearing that the white collar bloodbath has arrived and you, as a Duolingo user, are supporting it.

There’s even an entire language evolving around slurs for AI, robots, and people who outsource their thinking to AI.

This is the perception that Luis Von Ahn was unaware of or unconcerned with when he made his announcement.

The question is, does it matter?

Financials don’t lie. Tune in on August 6th at 5:30 ET, and we get to find out.