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Synthetic datasets have long been thought of as second-rate, to be used only when "real" data collected directly from the real world is unavailable. But this perspective assumes that raw data is clean, unbiased, and trustworthy, which it…

The success of AI models relies on the availability of large, diverse, and high-quality datasets, which can be challenging to obtain due to data scarcity, privacy concerns, and high costs. Synthetic data has emerged as a promising solution…

Many ground-breaking advancements in machine learning can be attributed to the availability of a large volume of rich data. Unfortunately, many large-scale datasets are highly sensitive, such as healthcare data, and are not widely available…

The use of synthetic data to deidentify data and to improve predictive models is well-attested to. The augmentation of datasets using synthetically generated data is an alluring proposition: in the best case, it generates realistic data…

This paper demonstrates the potential of statistical disclosure control for protecting the data used to train recommender systems. Specifically, we use a synthetic data generation approach to hide specific information in the user-item…

In today's business landscape, organizations need to find the right balance between using their customers' data ethically to power AI solutions and being compliant regarding data privacy and data usage regulations. In this paper, we discuss…

In the current data driven era, synthetic data, artificially generated data that resembles the characteristics of real world data without containing actual personal information, is gaining prominence. This is due to its potential to…

Sharing data can often enable compelling applications and analytics. However, more often than not, valuable datasets contain information of a sensitive nature, and thus, sharing them can endanger the privacy of users and organizations. A…

Synthetic augmentation is increasingly used to mitigate data scarcity in financial machine learning, yet its statistical role remains poorly understood. We formalize synthetic augmentation as a modification of the effective training…

Mixup is a widely adopted data augmentation technique known for enhancing the generalization of machine learning models by interpolating between data points. Despite its success and popularity, limited attention has been given to…

Predicting the economy's short-term dynamics -- a vital input to economic agents' decision-making process -- often uses lagged indicators in linear models. This is typically sufficient during normal times but could prove inadequate during…

Synthetic data has been advertised as a silver-bullet solution to privacy-preserving data publishing that addresses the shortcomings of traditional anonymisation techniques. The promise is that synthetic data drawn from generative models…

Recent advances in generative modelling have led many to see synthetic data as the go-to solution for a range of problems around data access, scarcity, and under-representation. In this paper, we study three prominent use cases: (1) Sharing…

A common approach to synthetic data is to sample from a fitted model. We show that under general assumptions, this approach results in a sample with inefficient estimators and whose joint distribution is inconsistent with the true…

Machine learning has significant potential for optimizing various industrial processes. However, data acquisition remains a major challenge as it is both time-consuming and costly. Synthetic data offers a promising solution to augment…

Synthetic data has gained attention for training large language models, but poor-quality data can harm performance (see, e.g., Shumailov et al. (2023); Seddik et al. (2024)). A potential solution is data pruning, which retains only…

The emergence of generative AI models has dramatically expanded the availability and use of synthetic data across scientific, industrial, and policy domains. While these developments open new possibilities for data analysis, they also raise…

Synthetic datasets are often presented as a silver-bullet solution to the problem of privacy-preserving data publishing. However, for many applications, synthetic data has been shown to have limited utility when used to train predictive…

Statistical agencies utilize models to synthesize respondent-level data for release to the general public as an alternative to the actual data records. A Bayesian model synthesizer encodes privacy protection by employing a hierarchical…

Synthetic Data is not new, but recent advances in Generative AI have raised interest in expanding the research toolbox, creating new opportunities and risks. This article provides a taxonomy of the full breadth of the Synthetic Data domain.…