| You know that sense of unease when you hear dead air on the radio? It’s the same feeling CIOs get when customizing AI solutions and find gaps in data. This is where synthetic data can keep things humming along. Historically, those means have been a privilege for organizations with deep enough pockets to afford data scientists, but as gen AI democratizes the landscape, barriers to entry are being eliminated as much as business value is being realized.
In today’s top story, we explore an emerging era of greater possibilities as more businesses around the world are in a position to utilize synthetic data to push the boundaries of their potential. The numbers speak for themselves as Gartner finds that 75% of businesses it profiled will use gen AI to create synthetic customer data by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2023. The reality check, of course, still comes from people. “The key to capitalizing on synthetic data is to always include human validation protocols wherever possible,” says Gordon Van Huizen, SVP of strategy at AI platform company Mendix.
 | Carl Friedmann, Executive Regional Editor, CIO |
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