A Synthetic Profiles source generates synthetic respondents from prompts you supply, one per respondent. You upload a spreadsheet where each row describes a persona — its demographics, attitudes, or context — and MX8 generates a synthetic respondent for each row that answers your survey in character. Use it when you want to model a specific set of personas and you don't have a previous survey to train on.
How it differs from Synthetic Twins
Both are synthetic respondent sources, but they are seeded differently:
- Synthetic Twins train on responses from another survey — you pick a source survey and the respondent sources to learn from.
- Synthetic Profiles take a profile prompt per respondent that you write yourself, with no source survey required.
You'll see both options in the Add respondent source wizard when you search for "synthetic."
Preparing the file
Upload a spreadsheet (.csv, .csv.gz, or .xlsx) with one row per synthetic respondent and two key columns:
- Identifier — a unique identifier for each respondent. The column name is configurable through the Identity column field (default
Identifier). - Profile Prompt — the text prompt describing the persona for that respondent. The column name is configurable through the Profile prompt column field (default
Profile Prompt).
Every row must have a non-empty profile prompt; rows missing one are skipped and reported. Any additional columns are kept as respondent metadata you can use in reporting.
Configuring the source
Give the source a Name and set the Target responses (the number of synthetic respondents to complete the survey), Market, Default language, and optionally Days in field and Price. Confirm the Identity column and Profile prompt column match your file, then click Upload file.
Generating responses
When the file is uploaded and the source is configured, use Generate responses to start generation. Each profile prompt seeds a synthetic respondent that completes the survey, and the source moves into an updating state while responses are generated in batches. Once generation completes, the synthetic responses are available in reports, cross-tabs, and exports like any other source.
Requirements
Synthetic respondents are gated by your subscription and project settings. If the Synthetic Profiles option is unavailable, synthetic generation is not enabled for your account or project.