The tool, called Maya, is built by Whycatcher and is designed to have natural, adaptive conversations with real people through existing an WhatsApp integration.

Maya can analyse text, video, audio and images during WhatsApp conversation, and includes guardrails around sensitive topics, non-judgemental language and transparency around AI involvement.

Strat7 said that Maya would aid research that aims to communicate with research participants in a familiar everyday environment.

Maria Colarusso, head of digital at Whycatcher, said: “Maya gives us qual richness at quant scale. She doesn’t remove the need for human interpretation, quite the opposite in fact.

“She processes reams and reams of data, then points out where to look for a deep dive. This is human-in-the-loop stuff, and that’s what I love most about Maya.”