Synthetic data
Examples made rather than collected from real events. They can help train or test a model, but may miss real-world problems.
The fuller definition
Synthetic data is artificially generated data, often produced by a model, used to train or test systems when real data is scarce, sensitive, or expensive.
The reference set has ten relevant events. Six are found, four are missed, and two additional returned items are unsupported. This example measures extraction, not every aspect of a legal work product.
A concrete example
A team generates fictional contracts with known clauses to test an extraction workflow without using client documents.
The distinction that matters
Synthetic examples carry the biases and errors of whatever generated them. They are not evidence about real records.
Related terms
Dataset
A collection of examples used to train or test a model.
Training & generationTest set
Examples held back from training so you can check how the model does on things it has not seen.
Reliability & securityEvaluation (eval)
Testing an AI tool on a set of tasks to see how well it actually does.
Where it is taught
Test an AI workflow on work you can assessSource and further reading
Hugging Face · LLM courseThe definition and example are written for this library. The link gives background, official documentation or legal authority as labelled. Legal scope depends on the jurisdiction and current text; product features depend on release and settings.