AI agents can now be used to predict and simulate human behavior—a capability that startup Simile is tapping to help large companies like CVS Health and Gallup replace people for polling and market research.
人工智能代理如今已可用于预测和模拟人类行为——初创公司Simile正利用这一能力，助力CVS健康公司和盖洛普等大型企业取代人工开展民意调查和市场研究。
Simile, which recently raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, is part of a new crop of startups using artificial intelligence to upend the way businesses have traditionally gathered feedback from customers and conducted market research.
Simile最近完成了由指数创投领投的1亿美元A轮融资， 该公司是利用人工智能颠覆企业传统客户反馈收集方式和市场研究模式的新兴初创企业之一。
Market insights is a roughly $150 billion industry that has long relied on conventional consulting and market research companies. But AI is sweeping rapidly through the sector, and the AI-simulated "people" offer customers quick, affordable access to market research—essentially a shortcut instead of going the human route, said Seema Amble, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
市场洞察行业规模约达1500亿美元，长期以来一直依赖传统咨询和市场研究公司。 但人工智能正迅速席卷该行业，人工智能模拟的“人类”能为客户提供快速、经济实惠的市场研究途径—— 正如安德森·霍洛维茨基金合伙人西玛·安布尔所言，这本质上是一种绕过人工途径的捷径。
Simile uses data gleaned from chats with human beings to train AI agents, who then become the digital twins of those people, said Joon Park, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup's co-founder and chief executive.
Simile联合创始人兼首席执行官乔恩·帕克表示， 该公司利用与人类聊天获取的数据来训练人工智能代理，这些代理随后成为这些人的数字分身。
The AI agents are essentially digital clones of real individuals, who are interviewed to gather their preferences, personality and other traits. Simile then combines that data with participants' behavioral and purchase data to ensure "generalizability and visibility into people's thoughts and behaviors," Park said.
这些人工智能代理本质上是真实个体的数字克隆，通过采访收集他们的偏好、个性及其他特征。 帕克称， Simile随后将这些数据与参与者的行为和购买数据相结合，以确保“可推广性以及对人们思想和行为的洞察力”。
Previously, businesses contracted with consulting or market research firms to learn about their customers—a costly process that could take months. Now, they can query Simile's online bank of agents, access that can cost between $150,000 to millions for each customer annually, Park said.
以往，企业需与咨询或市场研究公司签订合同以了解客户情况——这一过程成本高昂，且可能耗时数月。 帕克表示，如今，他们可以查询Simile的在线代理库，每年每位客户的访问费用在15万美元至数百万美元不等。
Customers can then ask infinite questions of their AI people, making the work of customer research cheaper and faster. The company has developed its own AI model for behavior prediction and combines it with various open-source models.
随后，客户可以向其人工智能“员工”提出无数问题，使客户研究工作更便宜、更快捷。 该公司已开发出用于行为预测的自有AI模型，并将其与各种开源模型相结合。
Simile was spun out of Stanford University in 2024 after Park said he saw immediate interest from large companies in simulation technology. He and two of his co-founders were among the authors of a 2023 paper on simulating human behavior.
帕克称，Simile于2024年从斯坦福大学分拆出来，此前他发现大型企业对模拟技术表现出浓厚兴趣。 他和另外两位联合创始人是2023年一篇关于模拟人类行为论文的作者之一。
AI-generated people have also been put to work in other areas like clinical trials, focus groups, even modeling clothing.
人工智能生成的人类还被应用于临床试验、焦点小组讨论，甚至服装建模等其他领域。
Over the past year, CVS has used Simile's AI-simulated people, or "agentic twins," to answer questions about its customers rather than solely asking panels of human participants.
过去一年里，CVS健康公司一直使用Simile的人工智能模拟人类，即“智能体双胞胎”， 来回答有关客户的问题，而不仅仅依赖人工参与小组。
CVS said its digital twins are based on 2.9 million responses from over 400,000 real people with their consent. The company then calibrates those responses with first-party data, such as historical survey responses and support interactions. In testing, CVS found that agentic twins replicated known findings with up to 95% accuracy.
CVS健康公司表示，其数字双胞胎是基于40多万名真实人群的290万份回复，且均已获得他们的同意。 随后，该公司利用第一方数据（如历史调查回复和支持互动记录）对这些回复进行校准。 在测试中，CVS健康公司发现智能体双胞胎的复制已知结果的准确率高达95%。
CVS Health Ventures, the venture capital arm of the health giant, is an investor in Simile. The firm declined to disclose the amount of its investment.
CVS健康公司旗下的风险投资部门CVS Health Ventures是Simile的投资者。 该风投公司拒绝透露投资金额。
Sri Narasimhan, CVS's vice president of enterprise customer experience and insights, said the company thinks of the agentic twins as "always on" compared with humans. "What I think was a really big unlock for us is we could go deeper," he said. "It's not like I have to stop with how many questions I asked. There's no fatigue."
CVS健康公司企业客户体验与洞察副总裁斯里·纳拉西姆汉表示， 与人类相比，该公司将智能体双胞胎视为“始终在线”的存在。 “我认为对我们来说，一个真正重大的突破是我们可以更深入地探究，”他说， “这并不意味着我提出的问题数量有限。 它们不会感到疲劳。”
As one example, CVS has tested how the agentic twins adhere to medication guidelines. By going deeper in questioning, CVS reaffirmed that people are commonly concerned about things like being able to reach a pharmacist and manage refills.
举例来说，CVS健康公司测试了智能体双胞胎对用药指南的遵守情况。 通过更深入的提问， CVS健康公司再次证实，人们普遍担心能否联系到药剂师以及管理药品补充等问题。
The company has also simulated hard-to-reach populations like providers and patients with chronic conditions. As well, it has tested the efficacy of customer messaging for pet medicine—finding that people don't consider giving their pets medication a chore, and are looking for services like coordination with veterinarians, Narasimhan said.
该公司还模拟了难以接触的人群，如提供者和患有慢性病的患者。 此外，该公司还测试了宠物药品客户信息的有效性——发现人们并不认为给宠物喂药是件麻烦事， 而是希望获得与兽医协调等服务，纳拉西姆汉说道。
CVS plans to expand its current roster of AI-simulated people to over one hundred thousand agents, and query those agentic twins in areas like store layouts and new product designs. "The trade-off is probably, if we're going to invest in the agentic twins, we don't need as much of that traditional market panel research," Narasimhan said.
CVS健康公司计划将其当前的人工智能模拟人类数量扩大到超过10万名代理， 并在店铺布局和新产品设计等领域查询这些智能体双胞胎的意见。 “权衡之下，如果我们打算投资智能体双胞胎，那么我们就不需要那么多传统的市场调查小组研究，” 纳拉西姆汉说道。
The digital people are also finding their way into surveys and polls.
这些数字人类也正逐渐应用于调查和民意测验。
Gallup is launching a partnership with Simile in which the companies will make over 1,000 AI-generated digital twins available to their joint customers, said Joe Daly, global managing partner at Gallup.
盖洛普全球管理合伙人乔·戴利表示，盖洛普正与Simile建立合作关系， 两家公司将向共同客户提供1000多个由人工智能生成的数字双胞胎。
Some of the areas Daly expects customers to be interested in are policy research, trend analysis and corporate research. The two companies are also planning to delve into topics like health, well-being and job satisfaction, he said.
戴利预计，客户感兴趣的领域包括政策研究、趋势分析和企业研究。 他还表示，两家公司还计划深入研究健康、福祉和工作满意度等话题。
"This allows us to go deeper in a more scaled-out way than we ever have in the past, with less of a financial barrier," Daly said.
“这使我们能够以比以往任何时候都更具规模的方式，更深入地开展研究，且财务障碍更低，”戴利说道。
In the future, Park said he expects Simile customers will require "multi-agent simulation," where agentic twins interact with each other. This will eventually occur in real-world settings to simulate more complex scenarios, he said.
帕克表示，未来，他预计Simile的客户将需要“多智能体模拟”，即智能体双胞胎相互交互。 最终，这将在现实世界中进行，以模拟更复杂的场景，他说道。
For now, market research is one of the easiest places for AI-generated people to start making an impact, according to Evan Brown, an emerging tech analyst at Gartner. Testing marketing messages with AI-simulated people is a relatively low-stakes task compared with healthcare settings, Brown said, and offers some leeway in case the AI goes awry.
高德纳新兴技术分析师埃文·布朗表示， 就目前而言，市场研究是人工智能生成的人类最容易产生影响的地方。 与医疗环境相比，用人工智能模拟人类测试营销信息是一项风险相对较低的任务，布朗说道， 即使人工智能出现差错，也有一定的容错空间。
"It's still early in the sense of, you're not going to be replacing traditional processes with AI agents," he said. "You still want to be going out and collecting that data yourself."
“就目前而言，你还不能用人工智能代理取代传统流程，”他说道， “你仍然需要自己去收集数据。”
Simile said it employs guardrails such as role-based access controls and monitoring for unsafe or sensitive content.
Simile表示，公司采用了诸如基于角色的访问控制和监控不安全或敏感内容等防护措施。
To help prevent AI hallucinations or other inaccuracies, CVS's Narasimhan said the company backtests the agentic twins with real people's responses, and relies on its researchers to flag possible inconsistencies and ensure the validity of results. And just like humans require an expert's touch in asking questions, so, too, do AI agents, he said.
CVS健康公司的纳拉西姆汉表示，为防止人工智能产生幻觉或其他不准确情况，该公司用真实人群的回复对智能体双胞胎进行回测， 并依靠研究人员标记可能的不一致之处，以确保结果的准确性。 他还表示，正如人类需要专家来提问一样，人工智能代理也需要专家的指导。
"It's important for us to constantly have that flow of testing and making sure it's tested against real humans," Narasimhan said. "We're never going to stop talking to real customers."
“对我们来说，不断进行测试并确保其与真实人类进行对比测试非常重要，”纳拉西姆汉说道， “我们永远不会停止与真实客户的交流。”
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