synthetic

Definition

Produced by a model or a simulator rather than collected from the world. Synthetic data is used to fill gaps where real examples are scarce, expensive, or privacy-encumbered, and it allows exact control over the distribution — which is also its weakness, since it inherits whatever the generator got wrong. Training successive generations predominantly on synthetic output has been shown to degrade quality, so mixes with real data are the norm.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Explained: SpatialBlock — Teaching Vision-Language Models Spatial Sense with 15,000 Block-Stacking PuzzlesSpatialBlock: Enhancing Spatial Intelligence in LVLMs via Synthetic Block-Stacking Problem