Category Twins uses digital twin technology to build AI replicas of specific audiences for early-stage market research.

Quantilope said that the tool was intended to help users include customer voices much early in innovation processes, with Category Twins using brands’ own datasets and automatically updating the twins based on further waves of tracking and additional research data.

Category Twins can also be created for specific segments of the population or consumer base.

Peter Aschmoneit, co-founder and chief executive at Quantilope, said: “Category Twins marks an exciting entry into the synthetic data space for Quantilope.

“As a marketer, I always wished I could turn to a consumer in the middle of a strategy session and just ask – before having to spin up a full research project.”

Jannik Meyners, vice-president of data science and AI at Quantilope, added: “Our Category Twins are uniquely anchored in a brand’s own tracking research – real data, specific to their brand and category, that updates with every new tracking wave.

“We ground the model in this continuously refreshed, brand-specific intelligence to reflect how consumers actually think and behave.”