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Synthetic respondents are AI participants. Each one plays a persona built from your screener answers and targeting attributes, and takes your study as a chat interview. Their conversations appear on your dashboard like any other. You choose them by picking Synthetic as the recruiting method in Step 4.

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When to use them

Synthetic respondents give you answers in minutes, at a fraction of the cost of fielding.
  • Explore early. Pressure-test a concept, message, or hypothesis before you commit budget to it.
  • Rehearse your study. Check that questions flow, probes land, screeners route as intended, and the report gives you what you need.
  • Iterate quickly. Run a batch, refine the plan, and run again in the same afternoon.
  • Ground it in real people. Interview-grounded respondents are built from past interviews with real members of our panel.
A common pattern: run 10 synthetic interviews, refine the study from what you learn, then duplicate it and field it to a panel or your own participants to confirm the findings before a high-stakes decision.

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Setting up a synthetic study

Choosing Synthetic in Step 4 changes three things:
  • Chat only. The interview format switches to Chat. Voice and Video are unavailable.
  • No concept links. Studies with concept links can’t use Synthetic.
  • Demographics are added for you. The first time you choose Synthetic, age, gender, household income, and ethnicity/race are added to your targeting attributes. You can edit or remove any of them.
Everything else works as it does for any study. Personas are built from the qualifying answers to your screeners and targeting attributes, so tighten those to shape who the respondents are.

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Running synthetic interviews

1

Launch the study

On Ready to Launch, the Recruiting card reads Synthetic Respondent. Launch as normal.
2

Open Invite Participants

On the study dashboard, click Invite Participants → Recruit from synthetic participants.
3

Choose how many

Pick a target of 10, 20, or 30 interviews. The dialog shows the cost before you start.
4

Start interviews

Click Start interviews. Responses appear on the dashboard as each one completes.
While a batch is running, the menu item reads Synthetic interviews in progress and you can’t start another. Once it finishes you can run another batch on the same study.

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Interview-grounded respondents

The dialog also offers interview-grounded respondents. Each one draws on a past interview with a different real member of our panel who matches your targeting, so its answers reflect how that person actually talked about their life and choices. Generated personas fill the rest of the target, and the dialog shows the split (for example, “6 interview-grounded and 4 generated personas”). Each grounded response is labeled Synthetic · Interview-grounded with the month of the source interview. If there aren’t enough eligible members for a target, that target is unavailable and you aren’t charged.

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Reports

Generate a report from the Reports tab, as for any study. You need at least three finished synthetic responses.

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What it costs

1 credit per 10 interviews: 10 interviews is 1 credit, 30 is 3. There’s no participant fee. See Billing. In the sandbox, Launch Synthetic Study starts three free synthetic interviews right away. See the Staging quickstart.

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Frequently asked questions

No. A study uses one recruiting method. Run the synthetic version first, then duplicate the study and choose a different recruiting method in Step 4 for the real one.
Studies with concept links can’t use synthetic respondents. Remove the concept links, or field the study to real participants.
As fast, directional input: to shape a concept, sharpen a study, or choose which ideas to take forward. Interview-grounded respondents bring in real panel members’ experiences. For decisions that need direct customer evidence, confirm with real participants.

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Next steps

Research panel

Confirm your findings with real participants

Study dashboard

Follow responses as each synthetic interview completes