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Synthetic Audiences gives you a fast prediction of what real people would choose. The prediction is built from years of real PickFu respondents’ past choices. Use it to narrow a list of options or get a directional read on a concept, then confirm the decision with PickFu’s human panel. Synthetic Audiences complements the human panel. It doesn’t replace it. What it replaces is asking a general AI chatbot what your customers would think. Synthetic Audiences is in beta. It’s rolling out to select accounts from late September 2026. To request access, join the waitlist. Details may change during the beta.

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How are synthetic panelists built?

Synthetic panelists are built from real PickFu panelists: their demographic and interest profiles and their real choices on past PickFu surveys. A result is dozens of separate predictions counted into a vote, not one AI’s opinion.

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How do I run a synthetic test?

You can run Synthetic Audiences in two places:
  • Chat with the PickFu Agent in the PickFu web app or in Slack.
  • Use the PickFu MCP in AI tools like Claude.
Describe what you want to test. The agent shows you the plan, including the audience, question, options, and sample size. It waits for your approval before it runs anything. Results typically come back in the chat within a few minutes. The agent’s summary is the result, and it’s labeled as synthetic. There are two ways to run a test:
  • Comparison: Give it a question and 2 to 10 options, either text or images. You get the options grouped into a stronger half and a weaker half, the themes behind that split, and one-line reasons from the synthetic panelists.
  • Single concept: Share one idea and one open question. The agent plans the research, gathers open-ended reactions from the synthetic panelists, and returns a summary. The summary covers the themes, where segments disagreed, and follow-up questions worth asking.
After a synthetic result, the agent offers a pre-built human survey on the stronger options as the next step. Running it is recommended, but you can decline.

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When should I use Synthetic Audiences?

Use synthetic panelists to narrow your options, and real people to decide. Synthetic Audiences works best for:
  • Narrowing a long list: Screen eight names down to the two worth testing with real people. This is the best use.
  • Text comparisons: Names, titles, taglines, claims, and price framing.
  • Early iteration: Get feedback at the idea stage, including content, feature, clarity, and trust questions.
  • Clearly different images: Image comparisons work when the options are clearly different from each other.
Use real people for:
  • Aesthetic calls: Taste is hard to predict from past behavior. Subtle visual differences belong with people who can see them.
  • Emotionally loaded questions: Synthetic panelists under-read fear and over-weight efficiency and price.
  • Anything genuinely new: Synthetic panelists predict from precedent, and a truly new concept has none.
  • Expensive or hard-to-reverse decisions: Final packaging, launch creative, or a name you plan to trademark.
  • Exact margins or individual responses: Synthetic results show direction, not the size of the gap.
  • Evidence for others: Anything you’ll present to a stakeholder, investor, or retail buyer.

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The synthetic-to-human decision loop

  1. Generate: Create your options, such as names, titles, or images.
  2. Screen with Synthetic Audiences: Test the whole list in a few minutes.
  3. Improve: Drop the weaker options, refine the rest, and retest.
  4. Confirm with real people: Run a PickFu survey with the human panel on your strongest options. You get a written answer from every respondent.
  5. Decide: Move forward with the evidence to back it up.

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How accurate is it?

PickFu benchmarks Synthetic Audiences against hundreds of past PickFu surveys where we already know what real people chose. It picks the same side as real people most of the time on text comparisons, and less often on images. Synthetic Audiences is in beta, and we keep testing and adjusting the models. Keep these points in mind when you read a result:
  • Trust the direction, not the size of the gap. Synthetic margins run wider than human ones. That’s why results show a stronger half and a weaker half instead of a single winner.
  • Accuracy for a specific audience isn’t validated. PickFu’s accuracy testing covers the method overall, not each audience individually.

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Frequently asked questions

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Is this replacing PickFu’s human panel?

No. Synthetic Audiences helps you decide what to test. Real people help you decide what to do. PickFu’s confidence in Synthetic Audiences comes from the human panel, because that’s what we score the synthetic panelists against. See Who are PickFu’s respondents? to learn about the human panel.

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Can synthetic responses end up in my human surveys?

No. Synthetic and human results never mix. Synthetic responses never appear in your PickFu surveys. You only get synthetic results when you ask for them through the PickFu Agent or the synthetic tools in the MCP and API. They’re always labeled as synthetic, and PickFu never pools them with human results.

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How is this different from other synthetic research tools?

Most synthetic tools can’t check their output against a live human panel. PickFu can, and does. See How accurate is it?

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What does it cost?

Synthetic Audiences is free during the beta. The human survey the agent recommends afterward is optional and priced like any other PickFu survey.

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How many synthetic panelists should I use?

Use 30 to 50 for most tests. Past about 50, each extra synthetic panelist adds very little because their answers converge.

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Why did I get different numbers when I ran the same test twice?

Each run draws a fresh set of synthetic panelists at random, and the model isn’t deterministic. The stronger and weaker groupings and the themes should hold, but the exact split moves. Treat the split as direction, not measurement.

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Which audiences are available?

Synthetic Audiences offers over 300 synthetic audiences. Coverage is deepest in supplements, health and household, beauty and personal care, books, and grocery. Each audience is a category sliced by a trait or demographic, such as dog owners in pet toys and food or people who read 4+ books a month. Current limits:
  • Audiences are US-only, with no geographic slices within the US.
  • A test runs against one audience. You can’t combine audiences.
  • Custom audiences aren’t available.

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Can I test my own customers or a non-US market?

Not yet. Synthetic audiences are pre-built from US PickFu panelists. To reach a different audience, run a PickFu survey with the targeting you need.

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How does PickFu handle my data?

See our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. For questions about Synthetic Audiences and your data, contact support@pickfu.com.
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