Synthetic Users: If, When, and How to Use AI-Generated “Research”

Summary: Synthetic users are fake users generated by AI. While there may be a few use cases for them, user research needs real users.

Of the new AI-based tools flooding the landscape of user and product research, few have caused as much debate as AI-generated users — also known as “synthetic users”.

TL;DR

What Are Synthetic Users?

A synthetic user is an AI-generated profile that attempts to mimic a user group, providing artificial research findings produced without studying real users. A synthetic user will express simulated thoughts, needs, and experiences.

A synthetic user is based on large language models (LLMs) that have been trained on vast amounts of data about people.