Things go horribly wrong when a Duolingo-like company replaces staff with AI so adroitly that its cast of cartoon educators begins thinking on its own. What follows is a madcap romp as the company struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. A thinly-disguised satire of Duolingo.
Who murdered the mascot and spokes-bear of the world’s most successful foreign language app? Was it an executive, employee, investor, lover, or one of the company’s animated instructors – endearing cartoon personalities invested with the power of Artificial Intelligence? What began as a chain novel prompt along the lines of “It was a dark and stormy night” on a language app fan site morphed into a full-fledged novel and parody by the prize-winning author of Cooperative Lives. The story originally appeared online in thirteen riveting installments but is now expanded and available in book format in both English and German as the definitive parody, page turner, and murder mystery for anyone who has ever studied language with a cast of digital cartoon characters and an anthropomorphic mascot.