Anthropic, the company behind the generative AI tool Claude, claimed in March 2026 that it used an AI interviewer to conduct “the largest and most multilingual qualitative study” ever done. The AI tool collected responses from nearly 81,000 people about their visions for AI, spanning 70 languages and 159 countries. Anthropic contends that tools like this can enable researchers to conduct “rich, open-ended interviews at a very large scale.”
Qualitative research is useful for understanding the lived experiences of people. “Qualitative” refers to both the type of data that researchers collect and their purpose for conducting a study. Qualitative data includes text, images, audio, video and anything that isn’t a number. This is why the term “qualitative” is often discussed in contrast to “quantitative” – that is, numerical – data.
Qualitative research enables researchers to deeply explore the tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes that characterize everyday life. It also helps unpack how social norms, cultural dynamics and subjective experiences shape people’s perspectives, beliefs and attitudes.
So, can an AI model without lived experience or a capacity to self-reflect connect with people enough to understand their worlds?
