What is Synthetic Data? Uses, Types, Pros & Cons

Data is a new generation of oil. But since data collection is expensive, sensitive and takes time to process, accurate data collection is only possible occasionally. However, synthetic data can be a useful substitute when training machine learning models.

In this blog we will learn about synthetic data. Its applications use synthetic data and generation models and tools.

What is Synthetic Data?

Any information created artificially and inaccurately reflecting events or things in the real world is considered synthetic data. Synthetic data generated using algorithms are used in model datasets for validation or training. For testing or training machine learning algorithms models can simulate synthetic data and operational or production data. It is believed that synthetic data has significant advantages, including the ability to generate large training datasets without manually labeling the data and minimizing the limitations associated with the use of regulated or confidential data. It can also customize synthetic data to fit circumstances that do not allow accurate data.

Significance of Synthetic data

The importance of synthetic data is manifested in the ability of synthetic data to impart characteristics that would otherwise be impossible with real data, which makes them indispensable for various applications. Synthetic data is a lifesaver when there is little accurate data or it is most important to remain anonymous.

• The artificial intelligence (AI) business industry is mainly dependent on this data.
• The medical industry uses fake data to assess certain disorders and circumstances where significant data is missing.
• Artificial data is used to train Uber and Google self-driving cars.
• Fraud protection and detection are most important in the financial sector. Synthetic data can investigate fraudulent situations.

Data processing specialists can access and use centrally stored data while maintaining their anonymity, all thanks to synthetic data. Synthetic data can also mimic the main feature of the actual data without distorting its true meaning, while maintaining confidentiality. The importance of synthetic data is also shown in the research department, and synthetic data allows you to offer innovative products for which vital data might otherwise be unavailable.

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Types of Synthetic Data

Synthetic data is randomly generated to hide sensitive personal information and to preserve statistical details of characteristics in the source data. Can use three categories to broadly classify synthetic data types:

Fully Synthetic Data

The fully synthetic type of synthetic data is that this data is completely composed; there is no source data in it at all. As a rule, the data generator for this type of data calculates the parameters of the density function of characteristics in real data. Later, on the basis of the estimated density functions, rows protected by confidentiality are randomly constructed for each characteristic.

The protection of these characteristics is compared with other characteristics of the main data to rank protected series and real series in the exact order, if only a small sub type of real data objects is selected for recovery using synthetic data.

Bootstrapping approaches and various imputations are typical methods of generating synthetic data. This method also provides privacy protection with data integrity redundancy, since the data is completely synthetic and no real data exists.

Partially Synthetic Data

This type of synthetic data uses synthetic values only to replace the values of several selected sensitive characteristics. In this case, the true values are changed only if there is a significant risk of disclosure.

This is done to protect the privacy of the newly generated data. To obtain partially synthetic data, a methodology of model-based procedures and multiple calculations is used. This methodology can also be used to calculate missing values from actual data.

Hybrid Synthetic Data

This type of synthetic c data can use these methods to impute missing values from the master data. Data created using authentic and fictional information is called hybrid synthetic data. The same record from synthetic data is selected for each random record of actual data, and then both records are mixed to produce hybrid data.

The advantages of both full and partial synthetic data are offered. As a result, it has proven itself to provide good privacy preservation with more utility than the other two, but at the expense of taking up more memory and processing time.

What Justifies the Use of Synthetic Data?

Consider a synthetic data situation in which you are trying to solve an artificial intelligence problem and are wondering whether you should purchase synthetic data to partially or fully meet your data requirements. For your project, synthetic data can be perfectly suitable as

• Improve the reliability of the model: Another use of synthetic data is to access more diverse data without having to collect it for your models. With the help of synthetic data, you can train your model using variations of the same person with many hairstyles, facial hair, glasses, head poses, etc., as well as skin tone, ethnic features, bone structure, freckles and other characteristics to create a variety of faces and enhance them.
• faster than the “actual” data: It can quickly generate commands from huge amounts of synthetic data. This is especially useful when real-life information depends on sporadic events. Couples may need more real-world data about extreme road conditions when collecting data for a self-driving car, for example, because of their rarity. To speed up the time-consuming annotation process, data scientists can set up algorithms to label synthetic data as they are created.
• It includes extreme cases: Machine learning algorithms prefer a balanced data set. They recalled an example with facial recognition. The accuracy of the models would increase (and in fact, some of these companies have done just that), and they would create a moral model if they created synthetic data on individuals with darker skin to fill in the gaps in their data. Teams can cover all use cases, including extreme cases where there is little or no data at all, using synthetic data.
• Protects user’s privacy: The use of synthetic data includes companies working with sensitive data, which may face security difficulties depending on the industry and type of synthetic data. For example, personal medical information (PHI) is often included in patient data in the healthcare sector and should be handled with maximum security.

Since synthetic data does not contain information about real people, privacy concerns are reduced. Consider using synthetic data as a substitute if your team requires you to comply with certain data privacy rules.

Advantages of Synthetic Data

As long as the data used by data scientists shows the right trends, is balanced, unbiased and of good quality, they should not care whether the data is accurate or artificial. The enrichment and optimization of synthetic data allows data processing specialists to realize a number of advantages of synthetic data, including:

Data quality

One of the advantages of synthetic data is that collecting real data is not only difficult and expensive, but it is often inaccurate or biased, which can reduce the performance of a neural network. Synthetic data provides higher data quality, balance and variability. Artificially created data can label and automatically fill in missing quantities, which allows for more accurate forecasting.

Scalability

Machine learning requires huge amounts of data. Finding the right data in the right size to train and evaluate a prediction model is often a difficult task. To cover a wider range of input data, synthetic data is used to fill in the gaps left by real data.

Ease of use

It is often easier to create and use synthetic data. When collecting real data, it is often important to protect privacy, eliminate errors, or transform data from many forms. Synthetic data ensures that all data has a consistent format and labels, which eliminates errors.

Disadvantages of Synthetic Data

The disadvantage of synthetic data is that to verify the accuracy and consistency of output data, especially in massive datasets, the management of output data can be difficult. The easiest way to approach this is to compare the generated data with the primary or human-annotated data. But once again, this comparison requires access to the source data.

Outliers are difficult to map because the disadvantage of synthetic data is that they simply approximate real-world data; they are not duplicates. Consequently, synthetic data may not cover some outliers in the primary data. However, outliers in the data may be more significant for some applications than traditional data points.

The quality of the model depends on the data source. it is closely related to the quality of the source data and the model used to generate the data. m can reflect distortions in the source data in the form of synthetic data. c can create inaccurate data by manipulating datasets to create valid synthetic datasets.

The use of confidential data creates new dangers, even though data analysis allows you to get new ideas that can benefit society. It becomes easy to leak private information or economically sensitive content, which can seriously affect both people and organizations.

Although not without compromises, synthetic data plays a role in resolving the conflict between maximizing the usefulness of data and protecting privacy interests.

Conclusion

Synthetic data is an innovative solution that is gaining traction in various industries. It is computer-generated data that is designed to mimic real-world data, without infringing on any privacy or legal concerns. Synthetic data can be used in a wide range of applications, from testing machine learning models to generating training data for algorithms.
Synthetic data also has its advantages and disadvantages. Its benefits include reducing the risk of privacy violations, saving time and resources, and increasing accuracy. However, synthetic data may only sometimes accurately represent real-world data, and it may be challenging to generate high-quality synthetic data representative of the underlying data. As with any emerging technology, weighing the pros and cons of synthetic data before implementing it is essential. Nonetheless, as the need for more data continues to grow, synthetic data will likely play an increasingly crucial role in our data-driven world.