Electric Twin launches AI research agent for rapid studies

Electric Twin has launched a new research agent that it says can complete research projects from a single prompt.

According to the company, the tool produces report-ready findings in less than 30 minutes. It is designed to run research tasks such as focus groups, follow-up questioning and further lines of enquiry without requiring users to draft a survey themselves.

The launch expands Electric Twin's synthetic audience platform, which until now has focused on letting researchers run surveys on demand instead of waiting for conventional fieldwork. The new agent is intended to take that a step further, allowing a user to submit one question while the system determines how to carry out the project.

This includes choosing which tools to use, which audiences and questions to select, and which results to explore in more detail. The tool can also ask similar survey questions in different ways to test whether wording is leading, and run adversarial testing to verify outputs, according to the company.

Instead of returning raw data for users to interpret, the system produces a written report. Electric Twin says the product is aimed at both research professionals looking to increase output and non-specialist teams in areas such as marketing, product and strategy.

Government test

As part of internal validation work, Electric Twin tested the agent against a UK government study into public perceptions of hosepipe bans in England. It says the original study took seven months to complete, while its tool reproduced the work in 25 minutes.

According to the company, the agent surfaced the same headline findings as the government study and identified additional insights. It says the comparison was made against real-world research carried out after the underlying models had been trained.

Electric Twin argues this means the results could not have been learned in advance. It also says the launch combines a self-service synthetic audience tool with an autonomous research and reporting function in one product.

Market shift

Synthetic research is becoming a growing area for companies seeking quicker feedback on campaigns, products and messaging. Electric Twin says its existing platform is already used by organisations including News UK, Sage, Centre for Net Zero and Virgin.

The company says its methods combine AI, machine learning, social science research and a brand's own audience data to simulate how real people behave. It claims the system reaches up to 96% accuracy, though the announcement included no independent verification.

Founded by Alex Cooper and Ben Warner, Electric Twin positions the new agent as a way to reduce the specialist knowledge traditionally needed to run formal research projects. The company says the product gives organisations on-demand access to findings for decision-making, while allowing experienced researchers to increase the number of projects they can handle.

It also says the new feature is available as part of its standard contract and will not carry an extra charge for existing or new customers. The company recently raised millions in funding from investors including Marc Andreessen and Atomico.

A brief factual test preceded the company's comments on the launch.

"In market research you used to have to think of a question, then wait weeks before you got your results and even longer for an in-depth research project. Now, you can ask and find out in minutes whether you're onto something. Our new agent removes the last barrier which is preventing analysis from being at every team's disposal. It means you no longer need to know how to design a survey to get a rigorous, data-backed answer to a question about your customers. This technology fundamentally changes how ambitious teams can be," said Alex Cooper, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Electric Twin.