Synthetic Focus Groups Are Here! Can AI Really Replace Real People?

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy The Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

Over half of web traffic is now AI bots. Synthetic focus groups are replacing human conversations. A $13 million investment is betting on 3D AI for consumer research.

Is your data contaminated? Can artificial personas deliver real insights? Episode 87 exposes the critical inflection point where market research meets AI - from malicious bot fraud threatening survey integrity to breakthrough technologies that could revolutionize how we understand consumers.

The research industry stands at a crossroads: embrace AI efficiency or preserve human authenticity. The decisions made today will determine whether we get meaningful insights or sophisticated noise.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

Use code EXCHANGE30 to get a 30% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

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Transcript

Lenny Murphy: And we're live. We're live.

Karen Lynch: Happy Friday, everyone. Seriously, happy Friday. I think one of the emails that I sent this morning was, is it Friday yet? And then I'm like, because it started off that way for me. How about you, Lenny?

Lenny Murphy: How are you doing? Good. Yeah, I think the short week, the combination of short week, plus me not doing a lick of work over the holiday weekend, and so this week is It's just felt, it's felt twice as long. It's not felt shorter, it's felt longer.

Karen Lynch: It's interesting because I remember Tuesday morning saying, oh, the week's going to go by fast. It's going to be a short week. And then today I'm like, wow, this is not a short week.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Fridays I do not normally have an all day back to back to back meeting schedule. That tends to be like Tuesdays and Thursdays or like my, oh my God, can I go to the bathroom kind of days. Today is one of those days. So. You're just unabashedly male is all I'm going to say.

Karen Lynch: I am. I am 54 years old, Karen.

Lenny Murphy: There are things that you learn to prioritize at this age.

Karen Lynch: It's just so funny because, you know, I have, I have, you know, I have lots of males in this household who's like, God, the conversations about going to the bathroom in this house. I'm like, seriously? Cause I grew up with all these females and like, we just did not do that.

Lenny Murphy: Look, I run on coffee. So there's a byproduct of that, that lifestyle choice. So anyway, to everyone listening, I am so sorry.

Karen Lynch: I apologize about the TMI that's shared.

Lenny Murphy: It's just roughly half our listeners are men, probably roughly my age. And they're going, I got it, Lenny. I understand. So, um, and the, and the women are saying, yeah, the men in your household, right? So no, shame. Anyway, but it is busy because you've got you, you're doing the heavy lift on. Well, so IIX Europe is coming up.

Karen Lynch: That's really the heaviest, the heaviest thing going on right now is IIX Europe. I mean, poor, poor Bridget on our team. She's, you know, kind of coordinates all of the speakers and sponsors information for our big events. And she literally came off of North America and she was like 150 emails a day. And then it's like going right into a kind of European coordination. I think yesterday she was like she was out sick on Tuesday and it was like or on whatever day that was anyway And it was like 200 emails. I'm like this poor woman. So yeah, our team is pretty tapped. Hi Cassie, by the way Hi Cassie, I see you there So anyway, yeah, our team is super busy, but Europe is going to be fantastic. So Karley put the graphic up. You know, there's exchange 30 if you want a discount ticket to it, please join us. It's so great. And you know what, it is May 30th. So now it's coming up like, you know sooner than And I can even wrap my head around less than three weeks.

Lenny Murphy: I don't even know what I'm wearing. Hmm. Yeah. You'll figure it out the day of, right?

Karen Lynch: No, I will figure it out at least the week before. There's always shopping involved with these events.

Lenny Murphy: And I got to say, I was looking through the attendee list yesterday. Wow. I mean, it was super impressive. Uh, the number of brands attending, uh, the big teams, um, big teams.

Karen Lynch: I love when they all come out and they, they, you know, it is a good opportunity to, especially if you are, you know, in just in Europe and you have, you have offices in other locations, you can all come together. And I just think that's one of the benefits of our company. And, our IX events are when teams come together and use it as an opportunity to pull their teams together as we do, right. But when the brand attendees do the same, I love it.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. And then right after that, we have the grit form. Well, no, right before that, grit forms right before that. That's right.

Karen Lynch: It's the tech. Sorry.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, you're right. I'm sorry. My apologies. Yes, because Grit's published next week. I think it's still on schedule. Yes. And then the Grit Forum, which will be great. Everyone can do the Grit Forum because it's virtual, right?

Karen Lynch: So Europe, obviously, you have to travel to Amsterdam to get there. But the Grit Forum, you know, everybody can participate in because it's a virtual event and, you know, free to attend and join us because We've got a lot to discuss.

Lenny Murphy: There is a lot to discuss. And you and I did officially figure out how to divide and conquer. We did last Friday when I was deer in headlights-ish.

Karen Lynch: We did. We figured it out. So we're going to tag team.

Lenny Murphy: So I'm going to chair two of the sessions. You're going to chair two of the sessions. And yes, it's going to be fun. But I'm telling you guys. Grit Report and talking about the Grit Forum, really everything we have been talking about on the show and kind of predicting where things were going to get to, which doesn't give us any special power, just paying attention, but yeah, it shows. So this is a big one. It's big in size and it's big in impact, so pay attention to that.

Karen Lynch: We should think about, because next Friday is our last exchange before the forum, so we should think about like an Easter egg or something, like, somehow or another, think about something that, like, we can, we can do to kind of gamify anybody who shows up next week and hears us and then comes to the Grit Forum.

Lenny Murphy: Anyway, sorry.

Karen Lynch: I have a creative expansion for my brain.

Lenny Murphy: I have an idea, because there are Easter eggs hidden in there. Nelson, Nelson Whipple, who does the bulk of the writing now, he is such an entertaining writer, and he revels in sliding in pop culture references throughout. There's a bunch, and they're pretty fun. So maybe we can do something around that. But why don't we, let's dive into...

Karen Lynch: Oh my God, let's dive into the stuff, because once again, between everything that we share, I have to figure out a way to kind of synthesize it into something that wouldn't take us two, three, four hours to discuss. But I really do want to talk about Crispin Beal, because he's just iconic in our industry. And I think he's so linked behaviorally. And this is, I think, an interesting change that I think is noteworthy. So IDX appointed Kristen Biel as their worldwide CEO. So he is, you know, has departed from his role of behaviorally. And I just thought it was really interesting, because I'm like, I don't know IDX. So I have to look into it. And it's more of a, you know, a marketing communications firm, as opposed to a purely insights firm. So what's your take on it?

Lenny Murphy: And then I'll tell you mine, too. I think Crispin is a marketer at heart, right? I mean, obviously, he's been in the industry. But when I saw that, I can see how his skill set translates there very well. That's probably a really good fit. So hats off to you, Crispin. I think more researchers should be in marketing, especially AI. AI enables performance marketing. It's driven by data. I think that skill set, you know, can translate really well. So yeah, yeah. What's your take?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, no, I feel very similarly that his, you know, his expertise in kind of, you know, bringing AI into kind of the behavioral, behaviorally ecosystem. And, and, as more and more companies just in adjacent fields, you know, are doing the same thing, like his expertise is going to be really valuable there. I just hope that they're, and this is our shout out to him, you know, that he's also just been such a solid partner for Green Book. You know, I hope that there's still room for us all, you know, to learn from one another in the MarCom space. And anyway, yeah, so kudos to you. Good luck to Behaviorally. You know, Behaviorally is our future list sponsor. So they're actually quite active in both of our large events as the future list sponsor, not just a partner to Green Book. But so, you know, we have a lot of people from the Behaviorally yearly team helping out at the event in Europe.

Lenny Murphy: So it'll be an interesting time to watch that company. It will, yeah. The only company that I do kind of an annual check-in with Alex Hunt for years, just because, you know, they're kind of a, oh hell, canary in the coal mine. That's not really the term I was looking for, but just watching their transformation, there's a handful of companies that like, you know, they're really, if you pay attention to these, you're going to get a lot of context about what's happening overall. They're just one of them. And they, and they, yeah, they have been good partners. So let's, I really want to talk about this, this spatial thing. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: All right. So headline for everybody before Lenny gets into it. Right. So spatial raised 13 million to build interactive 3D AI foundation models. So I didn't dig too much into it, but the research that I did was like, this is sort of about video games. However, there's massive, if you think through that, there's massive implications for the insights industry. So go, and then I'll. Yeah, no, I'm sure you went to the same place.

Lenny Murphy: I was like, you know, the, you know, when there's the gamification craze, right? The problem is building the games. It's a pain in the butt. It's expensive, et cetera, et cetera. So there was just a process of inefficiency in trying to change the form factor of research. And you see an advance like this, and it was kind of waiting on, all right, see what we've seen recently with AI video and kind of that real-time genesis, then thinking, how's that going to play out in more interactive content? Spatial has done that, and although they didn't set their sights on research, I hope somebody is looking at taking that same approach or adapting their technology.

Karen Lynch: Well, it's HelloAra, right, who, you know, they've been speaking at our events and talking about their immersive environments. And that really was kind of the best we'd seen. To date. And I don't know how many other players are doing what they're doing. At least if they are, they're not broadcasting it quite the same way that Hello Aura has done and that team there. So it's going to be interesting to me to see if other players pop up, because I think that the technology not only has been there, but now we've got the kind of AI assisted, making it easier to make it easier to make it better and stronger and solid. So it'll be interesting to see if more players pop up in this space. I'd like to see it. I think it's cool. And I think the potential is there, and yet not being leveraged quite the way I see it. I don't think it's being maximized and used to its potential yet.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, agreed.

Karen Lynch: But maybe this coding shortcut will get us there.

Lenny Murphy: Maybe it will. Because if I understand it correctly, all things, it starts with a text prompt. And there's no reason why that text prop can't be a question. And then, you know, creating, but then, you know, creating more of an interactive kind of gameplay type of scenario. We've seen applications over the years that were custom built kind of bespoke research games that were very cool and very effective and did, you know, just really neat things. It was just hard to reach the scale.

Karen Lynch: And I also think that there is still a, it's going to sound ageist. I don't want to be ageist, but I think there is a misperception of the gaming community and who gamers are and a lack of appreciation that, you know, like very mainstream people also game. I mean, whether it's somebody in our company who I know, you know, has kind of a gaming, a gaming hobby is not the right word, you know, a part of their life, that's a gaming passion. And my son, like, you know, he plays games with his friends all the time. As a young adult, they leave their nine to five day jobs where you wouldn't think of them as gamers. And then they stay up half the night, you know, playing games with each other and interacting. And it's just such a, it's somebody else that I know. Like I was having a video call with her for a meeting yesterday and I see the TV going in the background and that's during her husband's work day. I just think gaming is so much more mainstream. Immersive environments are ripe for people like that, people who just, you know what, this is what they like to do.

Lenny Murphy: They like to be in immersive environments. Give them what they want. Absolutely, 100%. Did I just sound preachy? I'm preaching. Preach away, sister. Nancy is the gamer.

Karen Lynch: I mean, I think Kat would be okay with this, but no, Nancy, it's Kat, which actually fits Kat is, you know, she's super tech savvy, too. So it just fits with everything. So yeah, Cassie, Cassie, you're another one. This woman, Cassie, I used to work with her when she was at Venture Foods. Like, you see, Cassie, you would not think she just does not fit stereotypical molds like she. Anyway, I think that that's a switch to almost here. See, immersive environments. Anyway, this is why I think that it's paradigm shifting. And yet people aren't embracing it just yet.

Lenny Murphy: Oh, go back back. The last thing we can move on is around 2010. I was when FarmVille and you know, all of those Facebook games were emerging. And, I was pitching hard to build what I call Branville, which was basically, you know, a game, like FarmVille, but focused on your brands, your shopping, right. And usually you'd have a data collection model. And I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Everybody else said, dude, you're crazy. And we're never going to do this. Until it came out that Zynga, who built this thing, said, we're a data company. Games are just a way to engage people to get data. And I've just ever since have just thought, we need to think a whole lot more like that. And now technology like this can allow us to break free of the confines of how we've thought about things from a form perspective and focus on engagement and get data in all new ways. I think it's really exciting and pay attention guys that all this AI stuff is a hell of a lot more than just a chatbot.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's talk about some business things. Let's talk about the next one. We have partnerships, we have new launches, new products. Paradigm Sample and Interbrand have announced their partnership. Data collection with, you know, a brand strategy, you know, kind of partnering those two things, not the first, this is not the first partnership that's around those two pillars, right?

Lenny Murphy: So... No. Data, first party data, driving marketing. We'll get to it later on, you know, there's a lot of stuff happening in the, well, we'll get to it more, but the first party real data has to be what drives personalized marketing via AI, right? It is not, anybody who thinks we can just do it off of scraping the web, when 50% of it is crap, that's not gonna work. So I think that's what we're seeing here is the continual development of those types of relationships, people recognizing access to data is what's going to drive marketing effectiveness.

Karen Lynch: Good, clean, high quality data.

Lenny Murphy: Good, clean, high quality data. Absolutely. First party data. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Very cool.

Karen Lynch: A couple other launches. Let's get into them. I don't know which of these stood out the most to you. We have like three in a row here. Obviously, I want to talk about the last one, but Pure Profile launched Data Rubico. Pure Profile, I always think of them as, you know, water sponsors at APAC. That's another thing as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, you know, full disclosure there. I, I, I'm an advisor there. So I knew this was coming and, uh, and good stuff there. They're leveraging their data assets in new ways, which is what we've been saying for our entire history. Now for the last 87 episodes, if you're a panel company, there's so much more that you could do. Here's an example.

Karen Lynch: This whole self-serve Insights platform, is this self-serve original Zappy model of being able to pick and choose what you want from the Zappy store? Is that what this is?

Lenny Murphy: There's some pieces of that because they've established good relationships with partners and they've embedded those technologies like SideX, for example, in this. For data collection, they're working with Quilt. There are a variety of modules and tools that you can pick and deploy. But there's also this data overlay for both sampling and for analysis that comes in. And, you know, they're building, you know, building out kind of the one stop shop for high quality sample data collection, analysis, and also, you know, kind of building synthetic samples and those kinds of things. It's all wrapped up there. It's what every company like them should be doing. Hats off to them being nimble enough to not be first out of the gate, but pretty quick in the front of the pack.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, cool. Well, so speaking of synthetic, let's just get the order of these two briefs. So Opinio AI debuts synthetic focus groups with AI moderators and panelists. So while qualitative tools, simulating group discussions. Interesting. Like, we've talked a lot about some kind of synthetic data for interviews, but this one I'm curious about, because it's the group aspect I'm very curious about. How do we, like, I don't know that anyone's talked about that yet, like synthetic personas interacting with one another in a focus group discussion. I'm like, what? So anyway, that's, to me, I don't know, it's just something I have to see in action to see what I think of it. Conceptually, it's not any different from a synthetic persona answering one-on-one questions or, you know, I just, it's the group part of it that's, I'm like, all right, let me see what that's about.

Lenny Murphy: Our friend at Sparky has had that for a while as part of the ideation process for marketing, you know, developing, yes, specifically around, you know, advertising and marketing. I think this is broader. Um, the question is not, I didn't see it addressed. It's going to be, what's it based off of Um, if they're using, yeah, I am this week, I've become very jaded about the quality of general data driving most LLM. So I hope that it's based off of some proprietary, uh, data set that is really based on real people. And I would say that I would be skeptical if we would get anything of depth, doesn't mean so. So opinion, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not hoping for holes, no shade, no shade. I have just not seen any synthetic sample yet that gets past the surface stuff. Um, you know, so T which is totally appropriate for some things. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Nope.

Lenny Murphy: But if you're looking for that out. Liar type of insight. I don't know if that's going to be appropriate. I could be wrong. Opinion, reach out to me and show me.

Karen Lynch: Show both of us. We'll both get on that one. I just had a podcast episode recording that'll launch a week from Monday. We were talking about synthetic data and AI-assisted tools and platforms, etc., etc., but we were talking about actually, that word came up quite specifically about when we need depth of understanding or internalizing, depth of kind of, you know, embodying what's at heart here, the importance of what we're learning or seeking to learn, we just are probably not going to trust anything synthetic because depth of learning comes from human interactions. You and I 100%. All the articles in the world, and then we have conversations, and suddenly it comes three-dimensional for us both.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, agreed. And I've been thinking about this a lot, that the outlier is the signal. It may not always be what is most important, but it is important. And I don't know that the LLMs today can deliver the outlier either. So the, but, but here we are fully synthetic focus groups, right? Okay.

Karen Lynch: Opinion, I want to create personas of everybody on the Greenbook team and then give, drop a hot topic to that group and see what, see something we might talk nationally about on like a leadership team call or something, like see what the synthetic personas for all of the Greenbook leadership team do when we drop a topic in.

Lenny Murphy: Like, I'd love to be a fly on the wall for a conversation that simulates what we might be talking about. Dance, monkeys dance.

Karen Lynch: All right, Disqus, let's get to Disqus. They launched an AI agent research solution called Disqus Now, rapidly conducting insights at the same, or conducting interviews at the same time, then kind of quickly analyzing the insights. And recruiting. Yeah. Oh, and recruiting. Yep. Recruit, moderate, synthesize all in one stream.

Lenny Murphy: Look, Hey, the, the, the discuss guys shout out, right. They've been on this from day one. They were one of the early companies out of the gate with grabbing. Uh, yeah, Jasmine, that would be, when you smile, you're smiling about, we're looking at the comment. Those of you on YouTube.

Karen Lynch: Who's our head of marketing, you know, was like, that would be a complex group, like laughing. So she was right with me in the leadership team persona chat.

Lenny Murphy: Anyway, please continue. Yes. No, just just shout out to, you know, to Jim and all of those guys. They were quick to see the applications of AI and for qualitative. You know, Disqus.io is one of the first of kind automated online groups. In terms of automated, the sampling and recruiting and making that really fast and efficient. When AI came along, they continued to just kind of add new stuff in and push the boundaries. So it's very agentic, and we're in that era now. So we'll see more.

Karen Lynch: At some point, we'll start to have a promo for our AI event that's going to be coming to us in October. October, like soon, is what in my head I just keep thinking about, because we've closed our call for speakers. We have a record number of submissions. We're going to be talking about a lot of agentic work. So reach out to Dana if you want to get in on sponsoring that event. There are still some sponsored spots available, although there are not really any organic spots available. So we have just so many fantastic calls for speaker submissions. It's companies like that that are going to be leading that conversation for us because they're really like implementing the next, you know, this next wave of AI. Like we are so past just, you know, generative AI to help you as a researcher. No, that's not what we're talking about anymore. You know, we're so far past that now.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, yes. Whole new, whole new dimensions opening up around us. But now that said, now let's get into it.

Karen Lynch: I was gonna say, that's a segue so we can keep going there.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, so great, great article on AI is fueling a surge and malicious bot activity online. More than half of all web traffic is an AI bot. Now, what's interesting about that is we've talked about that when you have agents talking to agents, right? So there is this future where that may just be an organic outcome where that is what's happening. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, I don't think that's where we are yet though. So today the idea of social media reviews all of those things just being bought driven Feels more malicious Feels more fraudsters are very similar to the bots that we see in sample. Yeah But that it goes but that does go to and well, there's an article article we'll share here in a minute to on, we know that these models collapse when they are self-referential. Right. Um, and so we've got bots feeding traffic and you got AI analyzing, you know, website, uh, traffic, and there's just this weird, you know, uh, this weird self-referential cannibalism, you know, type of thing happening. Uh, stuff gets weird.

Karen Lynch: And you know, you just reminded me as you started talking, so I just messaged Karley a link to Mary Beth Weber, who's, you know, with the case for quality. She had shared a post within the last week or at least one week ago about somebody's sub stack talking about the collapse, the quiet collapse of surveys. And so even though it's anyway, it's somebody's, you know, POV on this, but it's all related right to, to these bots and the fraud. And now our eyes are all really open to how prolific is not the right word, but how perfusive or anyway, struggling for the right, pervasive. I'm like, I'm struggling for the right vocabulary.

Lenny Murphy: It's a P word.

Karen Lynch: So like, you know, and, and, and yeah, AI is enabling bot activity at a scale. It's like, when we scale our research, guess what? Malicious activity is getting scaled as well, which is unnerving at best.

Lenny Murphy: I almost added in here just for us to think of this. It was an ex-post of a video of a bot farm, PureTech bot phones, right, in China or whatever. I mean, literally, it was kind of amazing. Thousands of phones plugged into a dock, connected into, you know, into a server, AI is running them and doing God knows what type of nefarious crap, but the, yeah, it's, it's real. So, so as this, and this is the type of stuff you mentioned last week, don't be a downer. I'm not the, as this is one of those as amazing as all the opportunities for AI are just like within research, but there is a fundamental garbage in garbage out and we're more and more indications that that's a problem.

Karen Lynch: And there's a difference between being a downer and being pragmatic. Approach this pragmatically, people. It doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world and dystopian society, but it means to open your eyes. And segueing into this next thing, Breen Pepin had shared a link, and I think the link that Karley's about to share actually brings you right to the list, but an ultimate list of 115 data quality resources curated by Case for Quality. So fantastic resource list, Kareem. Thank you for sharing. And we will also kind of share that here. It's important to continue this conversation about data quality and not say things like, oh, yes, we discussed that. Let's move on. No, this is an ongoing conversation. These tools are, you know, critical.

Lenny Murphy: And the stakes are getting higher. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, truly, we're, we're seeing that. So the stakes are getting higher. So yeah, so pay attention. On a related note, our friends at EMI released the sample landscape 2025. They've been doing this for a few years now. Is a, you know, they're really experts kind of blending samples as a service layer on to making sure you got the right sample sources for whatever your project is. I've been doing it for a long time. They're great. And it explores trends like synthetic respondents, AI's role in response quality, API driven sample management. They have some metrics that they've compared to their own studies with different sample providers on some key metrics. So definitely worth checking out. It's a labor of love for the EMI team and appreciate them sharing that. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: And in the camps of future reading... These last two are good. They're interesting.

Lenny Murphy: These last two are good, but you got to read them.

Karen Lynch: They're both reads, right? So one of them is generative AI's role in the future of consumer insights explored in the Journal of Consumer Research. And that one's interesting because it gives a framework. Don't we love frameworks like we're such nerds?

Lenny Murphy: It's very yeah, Mike. It is printed in academic journals I like, it's a framework.

Karen Lynch: It's a framework talking about how it's shaping research, but what's interesting about this one? It also gives you some solutions like it gives you kind of like the like, okay Here's here's a framework and here's what you really need to do. So for example, you know if we've got a world of bias happening in some of the generative AI produced stuff, right? Bias is a part of it. It is a problem. So what can we do? Well, we can make sure that we are using, you know, diverse data sets, interviewing marginalized or underrepresented communities also, like making sure that we are staying true to the the universe and making sure we're training it properly so that it is not just a biased view of everything, giving it clear directives for that, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, so a good read, a long read, an academic read, but have at it, friends. Yes.

Lenny Murphy: And there's a cautionary component of that as well that reinforces what we've been talking about, that everything you just said, those solutions are important. Because if we don't, we kind of aren't going down a great path. Of quality and impact and differentiation, it just becomes kind of the, everything just becomes crap. It's got to have the essence. But it doesn't have to be. It does not have to be. There's a lot that we could do. So it was a great piece. And then the last one, Fran Walton, the pros and cons of AI-generated user data compared to traditional human input. So synthetic users versus human response and research. I just really appreciate the rigor of putting all those things together. I don't think there was stuff we hadn't talked about. But she did a great job of just putting everything together with more depth and nuance that maybe we've gotten to on the show. So definitely worth checking out.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. And you know, especially hold on, let me just make sure Karley adds the that ultimate list that Corrine shared. So I just want to make sure she goes back up to that bullet point and shares that actual list, because good resources. Anyway, this last article or piece, thought piece, I think in the context of the conversation you and I have had throughout this particular live stream today is about the synthetic. It's a good time for us to really be thinking about synthetic data and the different use cases. And yes, faster, better, cheaper, sure. Faster, better, cheaper, define better, because if better is deeper, synthetic might not be the way to go. So how are you defining it better? Better doesn't always mean deeper.

Lenny Murphy: I'll say, excuse me, one last thing on that. It was interesting this week, I was in debate with a client who has a synthetic sample offering. I'll leave it at that. Yeah. And their thinking was the primary research, both within the brand side organizationally, as well as a driver of business decision making would be gone in two years.

Karen Lynch: And it's like, I don't know about all that.

Lenny Murphy: But here, here was my kill shot in that conversation.

Karen Lynch: You know, that's interesting, except that Google, Meta, and Amazon continue to build their primary research organization. You know, they have their own proprietary AI. They probably, the stuff they have behind the curtain is probably a hell of a lot better than what they made available publicly, but yet they still keep investing in primary research. Because, to your point, nuance, depth, context, get to the why. I just don't think about these solutions, they may get there one day, but they're not there yet. Yes, so I don't think we're gonna be replaced by robots yet. And I think it's actually probably pretty, if ever, pretty far off. So let's focus on what we do better than anything else. Good way to end, all right, there we go. Here's my inspirational soapbox for the day.

Lenny Murphy: Oh my goodness, well, on that note, Again, I know we leave you with a lot of reading, but keep at it, folks.

Karen Lynch: And I hope that everybody has a good weekend.

Lenny Murphy: I'm sure there's lawns to mow, or barbecues to get to, or beaches that have sun, as opposed to the ones near me that don't, because it rains on weekends in the Northeast.

Karen Lynch: That's just, I think it's been eight weekends in a row that it's rained up here.

Lenny Murphy: So anyway, I hope everybody enjoys whatever they've got going on.

Karen Lynch: And we'll be back with the same bat time, same bat chance.

Lenny Murphy: Maybe with something fun to think about for the grit forum.

Karen Lynch: So yeah, cool stuff, everybody. We'll talk to you next week.

Lenny Murphy: Have a great one. Bye.

Links from the episode:

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SpAItial Raises $13M to Build Interactive 3D AI Foundation Models 

Paradigm Sample and Interbrand Announce Strategic Partnership  

Pureprofile Launches Datarubico: A Self-Serve Insights Platform 

Opinio AI Debuts Synthetic Focus Groups with AI Moderators and Participants 

Discuss Launches AI Agent Research Solution ‘Discuss Now’ 

AI is Fueling a Surge in Malicious Bot Activity Online 

Mary Beth Weber - Read her post! 

Karine Pepin - Ultimate List of 115 Data Quality Resources Curated by CASE4Quality 

EMI Releases ‘The Sample Landscape: 2025’ Report Analyzing AI and Market Research Disruptions  

GenAI’s Role in the Future of Consumer Research Explored in JCR 

Synthetic Users vs. Human Respondents in Research