Personas in the Age of AI: Swiss insights

A Historical Perspective:

Personas originated in the late 19th century as sociological tools to represent the characteristics of specific population groups. Max Weber (1864-1920), pioneer and founder of this concept, emphasized that the purpose of personas is to embody and bring to life, sometimes by exaggeration, the strategic points that must be considered to make impactful decisions. Over time, personas transitioned into market research, aiding in understanding consumer motivations and expectations. The 1980s saw the adoption of personas in UX research, bridging the gap between design intentions and user needs. Subsequently, marketing and strategy departments leveraged personas to define buyer communities and target specific profiles. 

The Functions of Personas:

A persona represents a consumer group through a psychological and behavioural profile, making it easier to understand the group and ensure that the results are as practical as possible for the user. Personas have evolved over the years to perform several key functions: 

• Bringing Data to Life: Personas humanize abstract data and create a platform for discussion, acting as a starting point for co-creation and iterative development.
• Aligning Teams Internally: Personas ensure consistent understanding of target audiences across an organization and streamline communication.
• Aligning Teams Internally: Personas ensure consistent understanding of target audiences across an organization and streamline communication.
• Inspiring Creativity: Personas capture emotions and viewpoints, sparking innovative thinking and creative solutions.

The Rise of AI and Persona Bots:

With technological advancements, personas have become more sophisticated, incorporating AI-driven tools. This evolution has led to the creation of persona bots, interactive entities that e.g. marketing teams and researchers can talk to and gain insights from. The challenge lies in balancing the simplicity of personas with the depth of insight they provide. There are evolving methods and opportunities for enhanced decision-making, collaboration, and innovation. 

Ipsos has been at the forefront of this revolution with the Ipsos PersonaBot solution, which is based on Ipsos' proprietary generative AI platform and is backed by extensive scientific validation. This new tool, that we have now in use with a significant number of clients globally as well as in Switzerland, enables a company’s stakeholders to interact with personas that represent their target groups. Teams can engage dynamically with target audiences, rapidly testing ideas, adapting to feedback, and responding to shifting needs with empathy – all based on methodologically sound research. Via a secure portal, they can ask questions on all kinds of topics: Attitudes and behaviours, communication needs, messaging and channel preferences, etc. The personas can be interviewed individually or collectively, almost like a focus group. The platform can also be linked directly to activation frameworks, e.g. templates for briefings from communication agencies.  

When built on a solid foundation of qualitative and quantitative research by skilled experts, persona bots serve as invaluable tools for ideation, hypothesis generation, and bringing a people-centric lens to every discussion. But they aren’t a replacement for rigorous research and human judgment when it comes to validating insights and making strategic decisions. Persona bots are only as good as the data and expertise that go into building them.

Creating a Persona Bot:

Creating an effective persona bot requires more than simply feeding raw data into an AI system. It involves a careful curation and organization of information, including:

• The Who: Basic demographic and psychographic information about the persona:
• The Why: Understanding the persona's motivations, needs, and attitudes.
• The What: Insights into the brands and products the persona might use.
• The Where: Understanding the context and occasions for product usage.
• Lifestyle: A broader picture of the persona's general lifestyle, interests, and media habits.

In addition to factual data, persona bots also benefit from being enriched with examples of language and personality traits to better understand the persona’s way of thinking. Images can also enhance the persona profile, although care must be taken to avoid perpetuating biases in AI algorithms. 

Biases and Limitations:

While personas help designers and marketers understand their audiences and assess target profiles, they have limitations that require careful consideration:

• Realism: Personas must be based on thorough observation and analysis. With AI, it’s all too easy to create personas that appear realistic but don’t represent actual consumer groups. The credibility of a persona depends heavily on the segmentation analysis and the researcher’s expertise.
• Representativeness: Personas are archetypes, not monolithic constructs. Their validity is context- specific, i.e. in relation to a market, a country, an object and a purpose.
• Priming Data Quality: The quality and depth of priming data are crucial for AI-generated personas. Inaccurate or biased data can lead to misleading insights.
• Perspective Limitations: Persona bots can only answer questions within the scope of their priming data, not beyond.
• Non-Causal Connections: AI can sometimes identify spurious correlations and confuse them with causal connections. Human expertise is essential for guidance.

Key Takeaways and Future Directions:

With responsible adoption, persona bots have immense potential to humanize AI, embedding the voice of the consumer into the fabric of organizations in ways never before possible. AI-powered persona bots represent a significant advancement in market research, offering a dynamic and interactive way to understand target audiences. They are not meant to replace human judgment but serve as powerful tools for inspiration and idea generation. As they continue to evolve and advance, expect to see persona bots become an integral asset, accelerating innovation and elevating the impact of insights across industries. It's crucial to establish guidelines and ensure responsible application of these tools to fully realise their potential while mitigating potential biases and limitations. The future of market research will undoubtedly be shaped by these advancements, and persona bots are at the forefront of this transformation.

This article is based on a forthcoming new global Ipsos white paper and has been prepared in a combination of Human Intelligence (Francesca & Guido) as well as Artificial Intelligence (Ipsos Facto).

Human Intelligence authors from the Ipsos team in Root / Lucerne are:

Francesca Leoni – Associate Client Director – Market Strategy & Understanding / Innovation

Guido Strothe – Associate Client Director – Customer Experience & Channel Performance

If you want to read the article, click here: https://swiss-insights.ch/2025/05/14/personas-im-zeitalter-von-ki/