What Is Synthetic Data?

There are two sources for synthetic data:

• Real-world data. Real-world data can be stripped of personally identifiable information (PII) and personal health information (PHI), but that’s not sufficient to fully safeguard privacy because the data records can still be compared to other identifiable sources. As in the COVID-19 example, the anonymized data must be recombined in a way that preserves all of the statistical properties of the data set so that the machine learning algorithms can draw valid inferences and create valid rules.
• Simulated data. In some instances, the obstacle for machine learning is an insufficient supply of real-world data. Sometimes collecting real-world data would cost too much or take too long to be practical. In these cases, simulations can supply data that is sufficiently close to real-world examples that the machine learning algorithms can learn properly. For instance, the self-driving vehicle industry uses a combination of real-world sensor data from vehicles running on roadways and simulated data from driving simulations (even video games like Grand Theft Auto).

There are many reasons to use synthetic data instead of raw real-world data:

• Privacy, confidentiality, and other data usage restrictions, like HIPAA health privacy regulations in the US or GDPR consumer privacy protection in the European Union.
• Insufficient real-world data due to the cost or difficulty of collecting the data.
• Unencountered conditions, such as phenomena that have never been observed (like a supervolcano), places that have never been reached (for example, the surface of another planet), or just the operating conditions of a system that hasn’t been used yet.
• Correction for statistical anomalies or biases in the real-world data, as when there are rare outliers in the real-world data that need to be made more common artificially so the system has enough examples to train on.

Where Is Synthetic Data Used?

Synthetic data supports many different applications.  Some of these are:

• Automated software testing for DevOps. Software development has always required test data, but today the short Agile development cycles of DevOps require more test data than ever.
• Self-driving vehicle development. Operating sensor cars on real roads is a costly and slow process, and synthesizing data from driving simulations provides a much bigger dataset for training self-driving AI.
• Manufacturing automation and robotics. Like automotive data collection, collection of real-world data in robotics and manufacturing applications can be slow and costly, so synthetic data can make training AI systems in these applications more efficient.
• Financial services. Like healthcare data, personal financial data is subject to tight confidentiality controls, and synthetic data gives developers and corporate users access to bigger datasets without violating privacy.
• Marketing simulations involving consumer behavior. Actual online behavior of consumers is subject to GDPR and other restrictions, so a synthetic dataset enables broader and deeper training of marketing AI.
• Clinical health research. PHI is highly regulated, so synthetic data makes AI and machine learning possible where datasets might otherwise be too restrictive to be useful.
• Facial recognition. Using photos of real people to train facial recognition can violate privacy restrictions and can lead to biases from underrepresented types of faces, and synthetic facial data can solve these problems.
• Social media. Social media platforms need to train AI systems to detect hate speech and extremist content, so they need datasets that aren’t subject to privacy regulations and concerns.

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Synthetic Data Helps AI Grow

Synthetic data is a rising area of research and development in the field of AI and machine learning. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently introduced its Synthetic Data Vault open-source project, an effort to provide a one-stop source of synthetic data for all kinds of machine learning applications. While the Synthetic Data Vault is new, it builds on research that has been ongoing at MIT since 2013.

The synthetic data field is growing in terms of a number of players as well. Here are ten companies in the business:

• AiFi for detail
• AI.Reverie for machine vision
• Anyverse to self-driving vehicles
• Cvedia for machine vision
• DataGen for augmented reality in interior environments
• Diveplane for clinical healthcare data
• Gretel creates a data synthesis tool
• Hazy for financial fraud detection
• Mostly AI for the banking, financial services, and insurance industry
• OneView for geospatial imaging

Synthetic data is not only creating opportunities at companies in that particular area, but for all applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. The demand for AI architects, machine learning engineers, DevOps experts, and related technology professionals is growing quickly. Simplilearn’s courses and programs, like our AI and ML Course in partnership with Purdue University, will give you access to the skills you need to compete in this important field.