Toluna Claims Personas 'First' with Bina Launch

Toluna has launched Bina, an always-on, AI-based research workspace allowing researchers and non-specialists alike to hold real-time conversations with synthetic personas; and Dynamic Awareness, which it says keeps those personas 'current with the real world.'

The company says Bina users can start with 'a question, a hunch, or a raw idea' and get answers - including summaries and analysis - 'in minutes'. If these subsequently require 'real-world confirmation', the same study launches to real consumers in Toluna Start 'with a single click.'

Bina has been piloted by around 50 clients across the globe, over the past few months, across FMCG, financial services, ecommerce, alcoholic beverages and consumer health. Users can interview synthetic audiences that mirror their own targets, compare their brand against competitors, and build custom qual and quant surveys through conversational workflows. Toluna claims the combination of synthetic exploration and immediate human validation in one connected ecosystem is an industry first.

The company's Synthetic Personas are grounded in data from its own first-party data from 25 years of research, adding up to billions of human survey responses from a consumer panel which currently boasts 80 million people. Each persona is modeled as a distinct individual rather than a segment average. The launch of Dynamic Awareness means they now receive and filter daily updates of general news 'through their own lenses like real people do,' based around their own interests, so the firm says a technology enthusiast persona and a baseball fan persona in the same market notice different things. 'The world changes every day, and a synthetic persona should change with it,' states CTO Frank Smadja. 'Dynamic Awareness keeps each persona current in a personalized way, so that the results our clients act on is not only up to date but mimics the diversity of human awareness.'

'When Toluna was founded in 2000, the idea was to democratize research,' says Founder and CEO Frederic-Charles Petit. 'to make it a mass market open to every type of business and function, moving at the speed of real-time business decisions. The insights industry is being rebuilt around AI, and Toluna Bina is that idea in its most powerful form. We bring together an unmatchable combination of strengths: 25 years of first-party human truth, an AI capability we began building years before the market caught on, and deep expertise in consumer behavior research.'

Toluna Bina begins rolling out in mid-October - potential users can register interest here.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.