Synthetic data is everywhere, but is it any good?

Pollsters and market researchers are using synthetic respondents to fill in for real people. Critics worry the practice could turn machine-made assumptions into data.

[Illustration: Sifaul/Adobe Stock]

BY Chris Stokel-Walker

The market research sector has a problem: You don’t pick up your damn phone anymore. Some eight in 10 of us don’t answer when an unknown number calls, according to the Pew Research Center, a shift that has had a knock-on effect on pollsters’ ability to get us to share our thoughts. Online surveys, too, can be easily gamed, and because they require people to opt in by physically visiting a website, they can be even easier to ignore than phone surveys.

That’s where AI can help. Across the polling and consumer research industries, firms are using artificial intelligence to........

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