Synthetic research terms,
defined with mathematical honesty.
Grounded in thepanelist's real algorithmic mechanics — Shannon entropy floors, anti-sycophancy guards, cosine similarity, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov benchmarks — not generic marketing textbook copy.
Synthetic consumer panel
A group of AI-generated personas, built to answer questions the way a described audience might, used to get a directional read before or instead of surveying real people.
Mode collapse in AI personas
When AI-generated personas that should represent different viewpoints end up giving near-identical answers, undermining the point of having multiple personas at all.
Diversity check (in AI research)
A check run on a generated panel to confirm its personas actually vary in their answers, rather than having collapsed into near-identical responses.
Synthetic respondents vs. real survey panels
Synthetic respondents are AI-generated stand-ins for an audience; real survey panels are actual recruited people. Each has a different, non-overlapping set of strengths.
Gut-check test in product research
A fast, low-stakes test meant to catch an obviously wrong direction early — not a statistically validated result, but a useful filter before committing real time or money.
Directional research
Research meant to indicate a likely direction rather than produce a statistically precise or certain answer — useful for fast decisions, not for claims that need rigorous proof.
Fake-door test
A test where you present an offer or feature that doesn't fully exist yet, to see whether real (or synthetic) demand shows up before you build it.
Persona drift
When an AI persona's answers gradually stop matching its defined characteristics over the course of a conversation, especially across multiple follow-up questions.
Answer-similarity scoring
A method for measuring how alike a panel's individual answers are to each other, used to detect whether personas are giving genuinely varied responses or converging on the same one.
Grounded AI generation
AI generation that's tied to specific source material you provide — customer interviews, a landing page, support tickets — rather than drawn purely from a model's general training.
Resistant persona (adoption stance)
A persona trait describing how a generated persona leans toward adopting something new — from resistant to enthusiastic — used to read panel results beyond a simple average.
Synthetic panel vs. focus group
A focus group is a live, moderated discussion among a small group of real people; a synthetic panel is individually-generated AI personas answering independently, with no group dynamic.
Research panel (traditional definition)
A pre-recruited group of real people who've agreed to answer surveys or studies over time, typically managed by a research firm or platform.
AI-assisted market research
Market research that uses AI somewhere in the process — from analyzing real survey responses to generating entirely synthetic ones — covering a wide range of actual methods.
Directional signal vs. statistically significant result
A directional signal suggests a likely answer; a statistically significant result meets a defined confidence threshold proving the effect probably isn't due to chance. They require different evidence and support different claims.