What is synthetic data
Synthetic data is “fake” data that is created by computers but behaves like real data. It follows the same patterns and statistics as real-world data, but it doesn’t come from real people or real events.
For example, instead of using actual customer records, a system can generate look‑alike records that have similar ages, locations, and behaviors but no real identities.
Why synthetic data is useful
In machine learning, models need a lot of data to learn and improve. Often, real data is hard to collect, sensitive (private), or too small for good training, and synthetic data helps fill these gaps safely.
Microsoft Foundry lets you generate synthetic data inside the portal so you can:
Data augmentation: making datasets bigger
Data augmentation means adding more examples to your training data. Synthetic data is a powerful way to do this, especially when:
You have only a small amount of real data.
Real data is expensive, slow, or risky to collect.
You want more variety or edge cases than you see in real life.
By mixing real and synthetic data, your model can learn better patterns and become more robust to different inputs.
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Testing and validation: safely trying “what if”
Synthetic data is also great for testing and validation. You can create many different test cases to see how your model behaves under various scenarios without exposing real customer or business data.
This helps you
Check how the model reacts to rare or extreme situations.
Validate safety and quality before using the model in production.
Run simulations again and again with consistent, controlled data.
Synthetic data in Microsoft Foundry
In the Microsoft Foundry portal, synthetic data generation is built into the platform. You can create artificial datasets to:
Train or fine‑tune models when you don’t have enough labeled data.
Generate domain‑specific Q&A pairs or tool‑use examples for your agents.
Prepare evaluation data to test your applications.
Foundry guides you through a simple wizard where you choose what task you want, upload a reference file if needed, and let the system generate new samples for you.
Microsoft also provides a sample notebook that shows step by step how to generate synthetic data using Foundry. You can open it, run the cells, and see how the code creates artificial data that looks like real data but is safe to use. synthetic data in Microsoft Foundry is a safe, computer‑made stand‑in for real data that helps you train, test, and improve AI systems when real data is limited, private, or hard to get.