The Experience Strategy Podcast · 2026-04-02 · 22 min
AI Twins and the Future of Research The Experience Strategy Podcast Episode Overview Two Wall Street Journal articles are making waves in the market research world - one asking whether AI can replace human research participants, and another profiling a teenage-founded startup called Aura that's already attracted McDonald's and EY. Dave, Joe, and Aransas bring their combined decades of consumer research experience to the question everyone in insights is quietly asking: is this the end of primary research, or the beginning of something more powerful? What We Cover The two WSJ articles at the center of this conversation The first covers Simile, a startup building agentic AI twins modeled on real people for polling and market research. The second profiles Aura, a company founded by people younger than Aransas's high schooler, betting that AI bots can predict human behavior better than humans themselves. Dave's evolving reaction - Worry, skepticism, and then possibility His first instinct was worry. Stone Mantel has built its practice on deep consumer research, and the promise of AI twins that can answer with 0.5% accuracy at first felt wrong.
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