The Synthetic Data Shift

One of the biggest secrets in AI right now is that the most valuable data might not be “real” at all.

Header image created using Substack’s AI generator.

As companies rush to build larger, smarter, and more specialized AI models, they’ve hit a wall: a shortage of high-quality data.

Human-generated text, medical scans, financial records, and sensor readings are finite—and often messy, biased, or locked down by privacy regulations.

Enter synthetic data: artificially generated information created by algorithms to train other algorithms. It can mimic real data at scale, filling gaps and giving AI models the diversity they need without running into legal or ethical roadblocks.