Synthetic research

Synthetic research is market research in which language models play the respondents: simulated consumers or digital twins of audiences filling in surveys, judging concepts or giving interviews. The promise is seductive: research results in hours instead of weeks, at a fraction of the cost. The fundamental question stays open: a model reproduces patterns from training data and can therefore hit common answers, but deviant, local and novel behaviour, exactly where research is most valuable, is by definition its weak spot. Useful for testing questionnaires and generating hypotheses; risky as a replacement for real people.

Covered in