The French InstituteI Built a French Learning App. ChatGPT Destroyed It in 3 Months. Here's What I Did Next.
I'm going to tell you something most entrepreneurs won't admit publicly.
AI didn't just disrupt my business. It destroyed it. Fast. And I watched it happen in real time, one cancellation email at a time.
This is that story.
I Built Something I Was Proud Of
In 2023, I left my last teaching position at an international school in Dubai and went all in on my own thing. I built Oui Speak, a French learning platform where learners paid a small monthly subscription to access a 24/7 learning chat, connect with other French learners from around the world, and practise together any time of day or night.
Then it became an app. Resources, games, live practice sessions, a real community. People weren't just learning French — they were making friends across continents. That part was genuinely special.
I built it alone. No co-founder, no funding, no safety net. Just me, a vision, and a lot of late nights.
It was hard at the beginning. Really hard. But it grew. And by the end of 2023, I had over 300 users, more than half of them active every week. I was proud. Genuinely proud.
Then January 2024 happened.
The Month Everything Changed
ChatGPT launched publicly in late 2022. By January 2024, it was everywhere.
At first I didn't panic. I thought — okay, it's a tool. My platform is a community. Those are different things.
I was wrong.
By February, engagement started dropping. Slowly, then quickly. Subscriptions began to cancel. And then one day, a student sent me an email that I still think about. He told me he was grateful for Oui Speak. He loved the community, the connections, the people he'd met. But he'd started using ChatGPT to practise his French. It was free. It was available at 3am. It never got tired. And it answered him instantly in perfect French.
He asked me honestly: why would he pay for a subscription when he had that for free?
I didn't have a good answer.
Watching It Fall Apart
From February to May 2024, I watched more than half my paying users leave. Month by month. Week by week. What was left was almost entirely free subscribers — people who were there for the community but not willing to pay anymore.
I tried. I integrated a chatbot. I added features. I kept going.
But I knew. I think I knew from that first email.
In May 2024, my domain and hosting came up for renewal. One year and a half of building, growing, fighting — and I had to make the call. I closed Oui Speak.
Not because I gave up. But because I was honest with myself: I could not compete with ChatGPT. No small independent platform could. And I wasn't willing to pour more time and money into a battle I couldn't win.
What Hurt the Most
It wasn't the money, even if it had impacted me. It was the community.
Those 300 users weren't just subscribers. They were people who had found something rare — a space to practise a language without judgment, with real human connection, with others who understood the frustration and the joy of learning something new.
ChatGPT can simulate a conversation. It cannot replicate what happens when two strangers from different countries bond over their shared struggle to get the French subjunctive right at midnight.
That's what AI took from them. And from me.
But Here's What AI Couldn't Touch
While Oui Speak was growing, I already had something else running in the background. Since 2021 — the middle of Covid — I had been building The French Institute. One-on-one and small group French programmes for professionals and international learners. Real teaching. Real relationships. Real progress.
When Oui Speak closed, The French Institute was still there. Untouched.
And I understood why.
AI can give you a robotic conversation partner. It can correct your grammar. It can be there at 3am. But it cannot read between the lines of why you're stuck. It cannot sense that your problem isn't vocabulary — it's confidence. It cannot build the kind of trust that makes a learner come back, push through, and actually get there.
A great teacher doesn't just teach the language. They teach the person.
No algorithm does that. Not in 2023. Not in 2026. Not ever.
What I Want You To Take From This
If you're an entrepreneur, this is not a story about failure. It's a story about market timing, brutal honesty, and knowing when to redirect your energy.
I didn't lose. I pivoted.
If you're a French learner, this is not a story about AI being the enemy. Use it. Use it every day. It will help you. But don't mistake practice for progress. Don't mistake a chatbot for a teacher.
And if you're a language teacher watching AI eat into your market and wondering what your place is, your place is exactly where it's always been. In the relationship. In the nuance. In the human part that no technology has ever been able to replicate.
Where I Am Now
The French Institute is still here. And it's thriving.
Our students are learning French, passing their DELF exams with a 99% success rate, and growing inside a vibrant WhatsApp learning community that keeps them connected, motivated, and speaking French every single day.
We're getting featured in major educational magazines and platforms from Dubai to Paris. Not because we fought AI. But because we adapted. We integrated the tools that made sense, kept the human heart of what we do, and grew with the environment instead of against it.
That's the lesson Oui Speak taught me. You cannot out-tech technology. But you can out-human it.
AI is now part of The French Institute — a tool that accelerates progress between sessions. But the relationships, the accountability, the expertise, the moment a student finally nails their DELF exam after months of work — that's ours. That will always be ours.
Because some things, you simply cannot automate.