What if you could interview 100000….. people simultaneously and still get rich, nuanced answers?
That’s not a proposition. It is a reality, and happening right in the research market. For decades, research has relied on structured surveys, predefined questionnaires, and occasional focus groups to understand people. While effective to an extent, these methods often miss something essential—how people actually think, feel, and behave in real moments. Static questions can only capture static answers.
Today, research is evolving. The shift is moving from collecting responses to understanding human stories. This is where AI-powered Interviews come in, bridging the gap between scale and depth by combining artificial intelligence with conversational research. In this article, we'll break down exactly what AI-Powered Interviews are, how they work, and why forward-thinking teams are making them the foundation of their research.
What is an AI-Moderated Interview?
An AI-Moderated interview is a real-time, live interview where an AI system takes the lead in guiding the conversation with a participant. It uses a synthetic voice to ask questions, manage pacing, and keep the discussion on track, much like a human moderator would.
The AI asks open-ended questions. It listens to responses. It probes deeper when an answer is vague. It adapts based on what the participant says. The result is a real dialogue — not a static form, not a click-through survey. In contrast to focus groups, automated interviews remove logistical constraints and human bias while maintaining the depth of qualitative research. The result is a scalable yet personalised research experience.
Formats of AI-Moderated Interviews
One of the key strengths of AI-moderated interviews is their flexibility across formats. Since different research contexts require different modes of interaction, the AI-moderated interviews also offer three major formats to the researchers.
1.Text-Based AI-Moderated Interviews:
These interviews are the most common, offering a simple, and accessible conversational experience.
Terapage’s AI-moderated Chat Interview feature harnesses cutting-edge AI to run natural, adaptive interviews that uncover rich insights with exceptional speed and efficiency. Built for today’s marketing research teams, it mirrors the human feel by personalising questions, refining follow-ups, and sustaining a genuine conversational rhythm. With functionality that outpaces competing tools, Terapage establishes a higher standard for automated qualitative research.
Figure 1: AI-Moderated Chat Interviews at Terapage enable friendly, probe-based conversations with participants, unlocking deeper human insights through engaging and natural discussions.
2.Voice-Based AI-Moderated Interviews:
Voice-based interviews take this conversation further by allowing participants to respond verbally, creating a more natural and expressive interaction.
Terapage’s AI-moderated voice interviews are made for real conversations, not static surveys. With built-in speech-to-text and smart voice AI, participants respond naturally out loud. It feels like a real interview. They are great for product feedback, concept testing, and in-the-moment reactions. All of it is captured without typing, friction, or compromise.
Figure 2: AI-Moderated Voice Interviews at Terapage enable natural, real-time conversations with participants through live transcription, closely mimicking real interviews for richer, deeper human insights.
3.Video-Based AI-Moderated Interviews:
Video-based interviews introduce another layer, where participants can respond visually while guided by AI prompts. This format is particularly useful for capturing emotions and non-verbal cues.
Figure 3: AI-Moderated Video Interviews at Terapage take conversational research a step further by enabling real-time
participant interactions with live transcription, camera, and microphone features—delivering immersive, human-centered insights.
Additionally, these interviews allow participants to upload images, audio, and video feedback too during AI-moderated conversations for better understanding and rich data insights.
Figure 4: Participants can enrich AI-moderated interviews on Terapage by sharing multimedia responses—including pictures, videos, documents, and voice notes—for deeper, more expressive human insights.
**How AI-Moderated Interviews Are Created at Terapage: A Step-
By-Step Guide**
One of the surprising facts about AI-moderated interviews is that they can be created in minutes with simple prompts, rather than requiring long hours of continuous thought and reflection. This section provides a detailed step-by-step guide to creating AI-moderated interview questions on Terapage.
1.Define a clear objective of your Interview
Every strong AI-powered interview begins with a single, honest question:
•What decision are we trying to make?
•What do we genuinely not understand about our customers yet?
The more precisely you can articulate your research objective, the more focused and useful the interview will be. A vague objective like “understand our users” produces vague data. A specific objective like “understand why our users/customers abandon using our product” produces actionable insight. Instead of writing “Ask about user experience”, write:
“What made them stop using our product after three years?
2.Create a Clear and Concise Prompt
AI-moderated interviews have changed the interview process entirely. Instead of asking rigid questions crafted by humans, AI allows researchers to add Prompts for the creation of survey questions. These prompts are open-ended, flexible, and designed to encourage participants to share detailed responses.
Example:
“You are conducting an AI-moderated interview to understand user experiences with a Dreamy Drift Hammock. Interview 20–60-year-old people who have recently purchased these Hammocks for their personal use at home, or for outdoor activities. Ask questions in a friendly and conversational tone. Begin by asking their name to have a friendly conversation. Then ask about their purchasing experience of Dreamy Drifts hammocks, quality, durability, professional behaviour, marketing campaigns, challenges they faced, and their overall satisfaction. Also include some follow-up questions to understand the root cause of their answers. Conclude by asking for suggestions for improvement.” Once the prompt is ready, ask AI to generate questions.
Figure 5: A clear, structured prompt powers AI-moderated interviews on Terapage by generating precise, research-focused
questions that drive meaningful participant conversations and deeper insights.
3.Configure Adaptive Probing and Follow-up Questions
This is where Conversational research interviews truly diverge from traditional surveys. For each core question, you define the conditions under which the AI should probe deeper. Such AI should dig deeper and trigger intelligent follow-up questions if the response consists of short phrases, vague language, emotionally charged words, or unexpected answers. You can also configure specific follow-ups for anticipated responses, ensuring the AI knows how to handle the answers you expect most frequently while remaining flexible enough to explore the ones you don’t.
Figure 6: Once the prompt is submitted, Terapage’s AI generates a comprehensive list of probe-based interview questions tailored for chat, voice, or video-based interviews—ensuring deeper, more adaptive participant engagement.
Figure 7: Terapage empowers researchers to refine every interview by editing AI-generated probes for each question or adding custom probing questions—unlocking deeper, more nuanced human insight generation.
4.Select your Format and Deploy
Once the interview questions are created, you can choose whether to deliver them as text, voice, or video-based, depending on your audience and research goals. Deployment is typically as simple as sharing a link, sending invites to participants already added to that relevant study, embedding an interview widget, or pushing it through an existing communication channel. Participants can join from any device, at any time, without any installation or setup on their end.
Figure 8: At Terapage, researchers can choose among chat, voice, and video formats before selecting the interview type.
5.Configure Interview Basic Setting
Before deploying the interview to participants, you can choose whether your AI agent is female or male to conduct the interview. After that, you can also choose the type of AI agent you need for your research. For instance, at Terapage, different AI agents represent different tones of conversation such as professional, friendly, confident, energetic etc. You can select your desired tone from the available options.
Figure 9: Terapage offers a wide range of AI agents with customizable tones and expressions—such as formal, friendly, and professional—allowing researchers to choose the style that best fits their study.
6.Preview the Interview:
Before deploying your interview to participants on Terapage, it is essential to preview the entire flow. This step helps you evaluate how your AI moderator will perform in a real interaction and ensures that your interview is both structured and effective. Previewing is not just a quick check—it’s your opportunity to experience the interview as a participant and refine it before launch.
Figure 10: Terapage also allows researchers to preview their interview before formally launching it on the platform for
participants.
7.AI-Analysis of Received Responses
As soon as participants start responding, the AI analysis tools immediately collect their
responses and generate results. AI can generate individual-response analysis for each
response as it is received, and a combined analysis of all responses received.
At Terapage, when the AI-powered insight tools begin analysing the response, you
immediately receive;
•A structured analysis
•Interview transcripts and translations
•Sentiment analysis showing emotions
•The most frequent themes and trends that emerged recently
•List of quotes that best represent each theme
•A rich taxonomy of main themes
•The frequency of each theme and pattern
•Summaries of all responses
Figure 11: AI-generated summaries of AI-powered interviews can also be translated into multiple languages, making it
easier for researchers to understand and analyze insights.
Terapage’s AI-Powered Insights and Analysis feature transforms the way researchers interpret and act on data. These advanced AI tools leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence to uncover patterns, summarise findings, and deliver actionable insights. With capabilities that go beyond traditional analysis, Terapage empowers researchers to focus on strategy rather than time-consuming data organisation.
Figure 12: Terapage’s AI-powered insight tools deliver powerful quote analysis, surfacing key themes and highlighting
selected participant quotes from AI-moderated interviews to reveal deeper meaning and patterns.
Figure 13: AI-powered sentiment analysis at Terapage provides deeper insight into how participants feel throughout their
interview responses, capturing emotional tone, shifts in sentiment, and underlying attitudes in real time.
Five Benefits of Using AI-Moderated Interviews
In today’s era of conversational research, AI-Powered interviews are rapidly taking the centre stage. They enable researchers to conduct rich, in-depth and scalable interviews within days instead of months, without compromising quality.
With platforms like Terapage, researchers can unlock powerful advantages while minimising manual effort
1.Conversational and Detailed Oriented
First of all, AI-powered interviews are conversational, not static. The interview evolves based on the respondent's responses, making the conversation more engaging and genuinely thought-provoking.
Figure 14: At Terapage, conversational interviews are conducted in real time, dynamically evolving based on previous
responses.
2.Genuine Scalability without losing depth
Traditional research faced a trade-off: either interview 50 people in depth or 100000 people with shallow questions. Conversational research has resolved this trade-off, as AI-powered Interviews let researchers interview hundreds of people simultaneously, with adaptive probing for each, maintaining depth and responsiveness. For the first time, qualitative depth and qualitative scale exist in the same method.
3.Reduced Human Bias
In traditional research, human interviewers inherently introduce bias in interviews without any prior intentions. Participants respond to how the interviewer looks, sounds or reacts. Contrarily, in conversational research, participants respond in a candid conversation as they believe no human is judging them. The result is more enriched data that was not possible with traditional research. Neutrality in interviews is the cherry on top of the AI-powered interviews.
Figure 15: At Terapage, AI-moderated interviews are free from bias and personal viewpoints, ensuring a neutral and natural
flow of conversation.
4.Accessibility across time zones, languages and contexts
Conversational research is making the research another global village. AI-powered interviews on digital platforms like Terapage are available to respondents in Jakarta at 3 AM just as they are available to participants in New York. There is no prior scheduling or coordination required. Once they are live on the platform, participants can access them anytime on any device without committing to a certain time of the day. Additionally, multi-language support can help you conduct interviews cross cultures collecting rich data from different participants of different backgrounds and contexts.
Figure 16: AI-generated summaries of AI-powered interviews can also be translated into multiple languages, making it easier for researchers to understand and analyze insights.
Figure 17:AI-generated summaries of AI-powered interviews can also be transcribed live, making it easier for researchers to understand and analyze insights.
5.Reduced Cost
Traditional research can be expensive, as it often involves hiring human moderators, assembling research teams for various languages and cultures, and conducting a large number of interviews. Conversational research addresses this issue by offering a more cost-effective solution. AI-powered interviews eliminate the need for human moderators and translators, allowing for research to be conducted swiftly, gathering thousands of responses from participants around the globe within weeks.
How Terapage Is Transforming AI-Powered Interviews
The platform enables researchers to generate entire interview flows from simple prompts, reducing the time and effort required to design studies. AI-driven moderation ensures that conversations remain engaging, relevant, and unbiased.
1.Multimedia Responses
Terapage also integrates multimedia capabilities, allowing participants to share responses through text, voice, images, and video. This creates a richer, more holistic understanding of human experiences.
Figure 18: At Terapage, participants can share multimedia responses in AI-powered interviews, enabling richer and more
expressive insights beyond text alone.
2.AI-powered Real Time Analysis
One of the most powerful features is real-time analysis. As interviews are conducted, AI generates instant summaries and identifies key themes, enabling faster and more informed decision-making.
Figure 19: At Terapage, insight tools generate word clouds from AI-powered interviews, offering a quick visual snapshot of frequently mentioned terms and key themes to help researchers rapidly understand overall response patterns.
Figure 20:At Terapage, AI-powered insight tools automatically group thematic coding from interview responses, organizing qualitative data into clear themes and categories for faster, deeper, and more structured research understanding.
Figure 21: At Terapage, AI-generated summaries of AI-moderated interviews provide researchers with a clear, detailed snapshot of all participant responses, making it easier to quickly understand key insights, patterns, and themes from the
data.
By focusing on in-the-moment data capture, Terapage moves beyond traditional research limitations and brings researchers closer to authentic human behavior.
Figure 22: At Terapage, real-time (in-the-moment) capture in AI-powered automated interviews ensures responses are recorded as experiences happen, making the data more accurate, natural, and professionally structured for reliable research
insights.
The platform also supports multi-language interviews, real-time analysis as responses come in, and compliance-ready data handling for teams working in regulated industries or with sensitive populations. Terapage is not building a research gimmick. It is building the
infrastructure for a fundamentally more rigorous and more humane way of understanding people at scale.
Figure 23: Step-by-step flow of AI-powered interviews at Terapage: from AI-driven question design and real-time conversational moderation to in-the-moment multimedia responses, automated transcription, thematic coding, sentiment analysis, and instant visual insights.
Final Thought
At Terapage, AI-Moderated interviews are not a replacement for human judgment. They are also not a shortcut that sacrifices quality for convenience. They are a genuine advancement in the research practitioner’s toolkit, one that makes it possible to hear more
people, more honestly, with greater depth than any previous method allowed.
Figure 24: Terapage an AI-powered Research Platform
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