Research rigor, built in
Get findings you can defend. Every study is grounded in proven qual methods, so the AI asks neutral, well-formed questions and adaptively probes for depth the way a skilled researcher would.
AI-Moderated Interviews
Qualitative research at survey scale
AI interviews that probe like a researcher and run like a survey. Real conversations with thousands of people, across dozens of markets, in more than 50 languages. Discuss is the only platform that brings AI interviews, live interviews, and quantitative surveys into one solution.
Why This Matters
Why do research teams trust AI interviews?
AI interviews hold real, adaptive conversations with thousands of people at once, across markets and time zones, and surface why people think what they think. The AI interviewer works the way a skilled human moderator does, digging deeper where there’s more to learn and moving on when an answer is complete. That discipline is what makes them dependable for validation work, concept and message testing, multi-market consistency, and sensitive topics where people often speak more freely to a screen than to a stranger.
Every interview, AI or live, joins your organization’s research in Discuss Intelligence, where anyone on your team can ask a question in plain language and get an answer traced back to the study, the segment, and the participant who said it in seconds.
What It Does
What can Discuss AI interviews do?
- Voice, video, and behaviorRead hesitation and enthusiasm, not just words. Voice and video capture tone, expression, and in-the-moment reactions, so you know how something was said, not only what.
- Stimulus and concept testingKnow which concept wins and why. Add designs, prototypes, and concepts directly into the interview and capture honest reactions in context, at the scale of a survey.
- UX and journey captureSee exactly where people get stuck and hear why. Watch them move through your website or prototype while they think out loud, in their own words and their own environment.
- Numbers and narrative, same interviewAnswer "how many" without running a second study. Structured questions, including rating and multi-select, sit alongside the open conversation.
- Insights ready to share in minutesThemes, quotes, and highlight reels arrive in minutes, with the volume behind each theme. Every study stays queryable in Discuss Intelligence, so the answer you need six months from now is still one question away.
How It Works
How do AI interviews work?
Describe what you want to learn or paste an existing brief. Discuss builds a structured guide grounded in proven qual methods: what to ask, what to listen for, and where to probe. You review with your expert lens and launch.
Recruit in-app from 4M+ vetted participants across 150+ countries, bring your own audience, or trust our experts to handle professional recruitment for you. Target the exact segment the decision needs.
The AI moderator interviews everyone in parallel, in their language, capturing voice, video, and behavior, and adaptively probing when there’s more still to learn based on your goals. Ten interviews or a thousand, on the same timeline.
Themes, quotes, charts, and highlight reels surface in minutes. Ask follow-up questions with Insights Agent on this study or Discuss Intelligence across everything you've run, and hand stakeholders a story they can act on the same day.
In Practice
What do AI interviews look like in real use?
HelloFreshGlobal consumer insights
HelloFresh used to run in-home ethnography a few times a year: six respondents, three countries, heavy coordination. With AI interviews on Discuss, that became a weekly cadence of 18 respondents across 10 countries, with 30 to 40 people from across the business watching the recap reels together.
A global agency40 concepts, one deadline
An agency had 40 product concepts to test and a stakeholder deadline that ruled out 40 rounds of human IDIs. They used AI interviews to narrow the field to the five strongest concepts, then brought in human moderators to go deep on the finalists. Breadth from AI, depth from people, finished in a fraction of the time.
MastercardClosing the “say-do” gap
Mastercard blends human-led research and AI on Discuss to close the gap between what consumers say and what they actually do: exploratory human sessions to find the questions that matter, then validation at scale with AI across hundreds of respondents.
If it's message testing or product feedback, AI is great for scale, speed, and efficiency.
Maria Rydzewski
Principal, Mastercard Data & Services
How We Compare
How do Discuss AI interviews compare to AI-only interview platforms?
Most AI interview platforms do one thing: run AI interviews at scale. Discuss offers AI-moderated interviews plus live human IDIs, focus groups, and quantitative surveys, all in one solution. Discuss is a Forrester™ Wave Leader for Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026, and every interview you run on Discuss compounds to feed Discuss Intelligence, where it stays queryable alongside your live and survey open ends.
| Feature | Discuss AI Interviews | Conveo | Listen Labs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live interviews | Built in — live IDIs and focus groups with real-time observer access and AI translation | AI-moderated interviews only | AI-moderated interviews only |
| True quantitative depth | Close-ends (single, multi-select, rating), open-ends coded into counts and charts, full survey and CATI platform via Voxco | Close-ends inside the interview; no survey platform | Close-ends inside the interview; no survey platform |
| Analysis across your research | AI interviews, live sessions, and survey open ends analyzed together in Discuss Intelligence | Limited to Conveo's own AI interview data | Limited to Listen Labs' own AI interview data |
| Analyst recognition | Leader, The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026, with the highest Current Offering score | Not evaluated | Not evaluated |
Frequently asked questions
No, and that is the point. AI interviews extend what qualitative can do: more people, more often, in more markets. They work best alongside the other methods a decision needs. Discuss brings AI interviews, live human interviews, and surveys into one solution, so you choose the right method for each question instead of forcing every question into one.
Use AI interviews when you need consistent, flexible conversations across a broad audience, many markets, or time zones, and when speed and reach matter. They are strong for validation work like concept and message testing, and for sensitive topics where people often open up more to a screen. Use a live human moderator for genuine exploratory work, emotionally complex topics, building trust over a longer conversation, or when the discussion needs to change direction in real time. Most strong programs today use both.
Discuss AI interviews run in more than 50 languages across 150-plus countries, around the clock. Participants start when they’re ready, so a study in Seoul and a study in São Paulo run at the same time with no scheduling and no calendars to align.
The AI moderator works the way a skilled human moderator does. It weighs every probe against your research goal and everything the respondent has already said, so it digs deeper where there’s more to learn and moves on when an answer is complete. No filler probes, no re-asking what was covered three questions ago. Memory carries context across the conversation, and a smarter reasoning model decides when to probe and when not to. The result is cleaner conversations and transcripts ready for analysis.
Minutes. Describe your goal or paste a brief, and Discuss generates a structured guide grounded in qual best practices, then programs it directly into the interviewer. Recruit from the global panel or bring your own audience, and launch the same day.
Every theme and quote traces back to the moment in the conversation it came from, so you read or watch the source in full context rather than trusting a summary. You design and approve the discussion guide, the AI works within it, and custom vocabulary capabilities plus access to a medical language model keep transcription accurate for your brand and category.