Digital personas powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly proposed as substitutes for human survey respondents, yet it remains unclear when they can reliably approximate human survey findings. We answer this question using the LISS panel, constructing personas from respondents' background variables and pre-2023 survey histories, then testing them against the same respondents' held-out post-cutoff answers. Across four persona architectures, three LLMs, and two prediction tasks, we assess performance at the question, respondent, distributional, equity, and clustering levels. Digital personas improve alignment with human response distributions, especially in domains tied to stable attributes and values, but remain limited for individual prediction and fail to recover multivariate respondent structure. Retrieval-augmented architectures provide the clearest gains, but performance depends more on human response structure than on model choice: personas perform best for low-variability questions and common respondent patterns, and worst for subjective, heterogeneous, or rare responses. Our results provide practical guidance on when digital personas could be appropriate for survey research and when human validation remains necessary.

She has long blonde hair, blue eyes and curves, but the stunning model on the magazine cover was generated by artificial intelligence. While men have designed many AI influencers, Gina was created by a woman who is a Playboy model - and she made the persona based on her own proportions and style. However, her AI model is 28, and she is 52. 'The funny thing is the men love it,' the creator, also named Gina, told DailyMail.com. 'The AI models are glamorous, beautiful and desirable, like Playboy models of the 90s.

What if Abraham Lincoln could address Congress today? Or your great grandmother could help run the family business? Researchers and entrepreneurs are starting to ponder how artificial intelligence could create versions of people after their deaths--not only as static replicas for the benefit of their loved ones but as evolving digital entities that may steer companies or influence world events. Numerous startups are already anticipating growing demand for digital personas, including Replika, an app that learns to replicate a person in the form of a chatbot, and HereAfter AI, which records people's life stories and uses them to create a replica embedded in a smart speaker. Even Big Tech seems to acknowledge the potential: Microsoft Corp. recently patented a method of using chatbots to preserve historical figures and living people.

Have you interacted with a digital persona yet? At the Museum of Art & Photography in Bangalore, you can have a deep and engaging exchange with one that represents the late artist M.F. Husain -- considered the "Picasso of India" by many. This avatar is eager to talk art. And if you ask him whether he's real, he will look straight at you and say, "As close to real, enough to impress you."

Alexa, Siri, Cortana and OK Google are all digital celebrities. But a new study has found that they are only popular behind closed doors. Research shows that 51 percent of consumers use voice assistants in the car, but only 6 percent will activate them in public. Alexa, Siri, Cortana and OK Google are all digital celebrities. But a new study has found that they are only popular behind closed doors.