Question 1

What is an AI focus group?

Accepted Answer

An AI focus group uses conversational AI to run qualitative research the way a focus group would, but asynchronously and at scale. Instead of gathering 8 people in a room, an AI moderator runs parallel one-on-one conversations and synthesizes the themes across all of them. Perspective runs these two ways: high-quality synthetic interviews with an audience you describe, or AI-moderated interviews with real participants. Many teams use both.

Question 2

Are AI focus groups synthetic or real people?

Accepted Answer

With Perspective, both, and that is the point. Synthetic interviews use high-quality AI respondents you can talk to instantly, even before you have an audience to recruit. Real interviews are AI-moderated conversations with actual people, run at scale. Many teams explore with synthetic interviews, then confirm the high-stakes calls with real ones.

Question 3

When should I use synthetic vs. real interviews?

Accepted Answer

Use synthetic interviews when you want answers fast or do not yet have an audience to recruit: entering a new market, pressure-testing concepts, sketching messaging. Use real interviews for the highest-stakes calls, like validating a feature with current customers or testing pricing before you ship. Synthetic interviews are high quality and quick to run; real interviews are the gold standard when you need ground truth. Perspective is one of the few platforms that does both well.

Question 4

How fast can I run one?

Accepted Answer

A synthetic interview takes seconds, try it above. A real study runs as fast as you can recruit, with conversations happening in parallel rather than one scheduled session at a time, so you go from brief to synthesized themes in days instead of weeks.

Question 5

How is this different from a traditional focus group?

Accepted Answer

Traditional focus groups are limited to a handful of people in one room, where a few loud voices and groupthink skew the result, and synthesis takes weeks. AI focus groups run as many parallel conversations as you need, each one adapting its follow-up questions to what that person actually says, then roll the findings up automatically.

Question 6

Can AI focus groups replace real customer research?

Accepted Answer

High-quality synthetic interviews cover a lot of ground for exploring and narrowing options, and for many decisions they are enough on their own. For the highest-stakes calls you confirm with real people. Perspective gives you both, so you can move from synthetic to real without switching tools.

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Synthetic interviews

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Real human interviews

When it counts, talk to real people. At scale.

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