Meet your new AI teacher: hypes, promises, and realities in AI-powered language education platforms

Abstract Amid the “breathless hype” surrounding generative AI in language education, this paper critically analyzes 48 online platforms claiming to use AI technologies through Critical Discourse Analysis and platformization theory (Poell, Thomas, David Nieborg & José van Dijck. 2019. Platformisation. Internet Policy Review 8(4). 1–13). It reveals how these platforms strategically brand themselves (e.g., .ai domain names) to appear cutting-edge, capitalizing on AI “hype” while masking the actual mechanisms behind vague terms like “AI-powered” or “AI-based,” leading to “definitional obscurity” (Williamson, Ben. 2024. AI in education is a public problem. Code acts in education . https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/ai-in-education-is-a-public-problem/ (accessed 20 August 2025)). Through multimodal strategies, they portray AI tutors as superior to human teachers and traditional apps. These narratives emphasize personalization, efficiency, and self-improvement, aligning with neoliberal values of individual responsibility and tech-driven empowerment, and contribute to the commodification of “the platformized ELT ecosystem” (Selvi A. F. Forthcoming. The platformized English language teaching ecosystem: Navigating implications for ELT profession(als). Tesol Quarterly ). This study contributes to emerging scholarship on AI discourses (Ferri, Gabriele & Inte Gloerich. 2023. Risk and harm: Unpacking ideologies in the AI discourse. CUI ’23: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces 28. 1–6), revealing how AI functions not just as a pedagogical tool but as a commercial strategy reshaping ELT in increasingly platformized and neoliberal terms.