A synthetic respondent is an AI-generated simulation of a human participant, designed to produce responses that approximate what a real consumer might say in a research study. In the context of AI-moderated research, synthetic respondents are sometimes positioned as a faster, cheaper alternative to recruiting actual participants. However, because no real person is involved, the outputs lack authentic emotional nuance, lived experience, and the behavioral signals that qualitative research depends on. Enterprise insights teams increasingly distinguish between platforms that rely on synthetic respondents and those grounded in real human conversations, since stakeholder trust in findings depends heavily on the credibility of the underlying data source.