Originally published July 19, 2026 by Artificial Breakdown
What if you could ask a whole country a question and get an answer for every single person, no surveys required?
On a recent episode of Artificial Breakdown, Arima’s Ray sat down with host Pete Bishop to explain how Arima builds a synthetic population of Canada using census data, survey data, and machine learning. Ray walked through why traditional research is breaking down (think respondent fatigue and survey bots) and how Arima fills the gaps with a probabilistic model built on 60,000 variables per person.
Ray also covered where synthetic data falls short. He compared it to a flight simulator: incredibly useful for training and testing ideas, but no replacement for real world results. He shared examples from candle marketing to sports fandom to World Cup travel behavior, and pointed to a recent Gartner report predicting 80% of companies will use synthetic data at scale by 2030, up from just 10% today.
His advice for marketers who haven’t tried it yet: start now. The tools are more accessible than people think.
