v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 1,610 entries across 24 domains · CC-BY 4.01,610 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack AStablev2026.2

Synthetic data

Data generated by a model or algorithm rather than collected from real-world observations or experiments, designed to mimic the statistical structure of real data for purposes such as augmentation, privacy-preservation, or model training.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
GAN-generated chest X-rays used to augment a limited real training set
Is an instance
LLM-generated patient narratives used to test a triage classifier

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Bootstrap resamples of an empirical dataset are not synthetic data in this sense (they are resamples of real observations)

Editorial commentary

Synthetic data must be disclosed as such in any analysis where the distinction matters (e.g., training-set composition, statistical inference, claims of empirical support). The generating model, its parameters, and the validation procedure used to demonstrate fidelity to real data should be reported.

References

Jordon et al. 2022 ‘Synthetic Data — what, why and how?’ Royal Society
OECD Synthetic Data Guidance (2023)

Also known as

Generated data · Simulated data

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Synthetic data"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/synthetic-data" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/synthetic-data",
  "name": "Synthetic data",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/synthetic-data",
  "description": "Data generated by a model or algorithm rather than collected from real-world observations or experiments, designed to mimic the statistical structure of real data for purposes such as augmentation, privacy-preservation, or model training.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/genai-disclosure#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/synthetic-data",
  "sameAs": [
    "Generated data",
    "Simulated data"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T01:55:06",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

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