How The Times is using AI to model synthetic focus groups from human audiences

"I got very nervous when you used the words 'synthetic audiences',"

"We think about synthetic research as a way to get to market quicker, get an answer quicker, take the guesswork out of what we're planning to do or thinking of doing,"

"We've got our own data that we [use to] poll our own subscribers, and then they made a clone of that. So we ask them questions together,"

2025 introduced the term synthetic audiences, with The Times preferring "synthetic research." Synthetic audiences are AI-generated simulations modeled on real human audiences to serve as focus groups for research. Advertising agencies like Dentsu use synthetic audiences for media planning, while The Times applies synthetic research to editorial product decisions and other purposes. The Times began work nine months earlier with Electric Twin, cloning a reader panel from its 642,000 subscribers and creating an AI panel modeled on the broader British newsreading population. The Times polls both real subscribers and their synthetic clones together to speed decision-making, such as choosing a podcast name.

Read at Digiday