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?
We are researchers who specialize in qualitative research on digital technologies. Collectively, we have decades of experience developing, conducting and publishing interview studies, and we teach qualitative research methods to undergraduate and graduate students.
While AI tools can support social science research, they also have significant limitations. Not taking these limitations into account risks undermining the unique value of research that relies on human connection.
What is qualitative research?
Broadly speaking, qualitative inquiry is about exploring the meaning people give to experiences.
Qualitative inquiry often involves face-to-face interviews with individuals and groups. What this looks like in practice varies based on a researcher’s academic discipline, their philosophical approach and their personal background.
While the goal is to produce explanations about the world, qualitative inquiry is designed to reveal the nuanced ways people make meaning while accounting for the different contexts that shape their experiences.
Qualitative and quantitative research approach questions from different angles.
For instance, our team has used qualitative inquiry to explore how parents, children and teachers navigate digital privacy issues. We’ve also used qualitative data to analyze how influencers, activists and everyday users make sense of and respond to social media algorithms.
Anthropic Interviewer can pose questions to participants and present follow-up questions based on a participant’s response. However, we argue that qualitative inquiry requires human capacities that an AI model lacks.
