Synthetic Panel

Also known as: Synthetic Respondents, Virtual Panel, AI Panel, Simulated Consumers

An AI-generated population of virtual respondents that simulates the attitudes, behaviors, and demographics of real consumers.

A Synthetic Panel (also called Synthetic Respondents or Virtual Panel) is a population of virtual participants created using artificial intelligence models—primarily Large Language Models and generative models—that simulate the responses, attitudes, behaviors, and demographic profiles of real consumers.

Unlike a traditional human panel, a synthetic panel can generate research data almost instantly, with no recruitment costs or fieldwork time. This makes it especially valuable for rapid iteration in innovation, preliminary concept tests, and exploratory studies.

However, synthetic panels do not replace research with real people for high-stakes business decisions: models reproduce training biases, lack authentic lived experiences, and can hallucinate patterns not present in the real market. Their most effective use is as a complement—for idea screening or hypothesis generation—before validating with real consumers.

Atlantia actively explores synthetic panels as an acceleration layer prior to full quantitative studies with AI.