[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Macromill Embrain, a comprehensive research and data-tech company, will hold an online seminar at 2 p.m. on June 30 on the feasibility of conducting surveys using AI rather than real respondents.

The webinar is drawing attention as it comes amid rising debate in the research industry over whether AI can replace real respondents after Nvidia released its Korean AI persona dataset, Nemotron-Personas-Korea.

Embrain plans to disclose results from a pilot test of a Synthetic Survey using AI at the event.

The pilot test was designed to compare responses from human panels with AI synthetic responses across four survey types commonly covered in marketing research: brand awareness and recall, consumer behavior, perception (importance and satisfaction), and intention (stimulus evaluation).

The verification found meaningful differences between human and AI responses in questions related to brand awareness or actual consumer behavior. In stimulus evaluation areas such as new product concepts or naming, the differences between human and AI responses were confirmed to be relatively small.

Based on the results, Embrain plans to provide a free proof of concept for synthetic research to client companies commissioning stimulus-related surveys.

Kyung-taek Lee (이경택), vice president of Macromill Embrain, said, "Because AI learns from text data accumulated on the internet, it structurally generates responses that differ from the spontaneous and impulsive decisions real consumers make in front of store shelves," adding, "This data shows that AI synthetic surveys are not a tool to replace all research, but rather an auxiliary means that can be used for certain survey types."