Stepford Twins and Potemkin Engineering: A Critique of Synthetic Personas in the Age of Generative AI

We aim to advance the discourse on generative AI by surfacing a high-level issue: the unacknowledged constructionism and reductionism in the notion of synthetic personas as used in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). We argue that HCI experts are in a position of power as producers of the "who" and hence the "what" of generated "participant"-based design and research. As practitioners ourselves, we argue that synthetic user generation techniques for HCI personas defeat the purpose of user-centred design as they may simply manifest and ventriloquize the team's ideal users. We untangle our key points of contention here.