Beyond Privacy: Navigating the Opportunities and Challenges of Synthetic Data
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Abstract (arXiv)
Generating synthetic data through generative models is gaining interest in the ML community and beyond. In the past, synthetic data was often regarded as a means to private data release, but a surge of recent papers explore how its potential reaches much further than this -- from creating more fair data to data augmentation, and from simulation to text generated by ChatGPT. In this perspective we explore whether, and how, synthetic data may become a dominant force in the machine learning world, promising a future where datasets can be tailored to individual needs. Just as importantly, we discuss which fundamental challenges the community needs to overcome for wider relevance and application of synthetic data -- the most important of which is quantifying how much we can trust any finding or prediction drawn from synthetic data.
Key facts. Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 51 of its 92 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2023.
Builds on
51 of 92 references.
References · 51
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50 most cited of 51 All 51 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 6; 2024: 9; 2025: 11; 2026: 3.
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- 2024Why Tabular Foundation Models Should Be a Research Prioritycited by 106
- 2023On the Constrained Time-Series Generation Problemcited by 54
- 2023Can You Rely on Your Model Evaluation? Improving Model Evaluation with Synthetic Test Datacited by 32
- 2023Synthetic data, real errors: how (not) to publish and use synthetic datacited by 29
- 2024ClavaDDPM: Multi-relational Data Synthesis with Cluster-guided Diffusion Modelscited by 28
- 2024Can I trust my fake data -- A comprehensive quality assessment framework for synthetic tabular data in healthcarecited by 17
- 2025TabularARGN: A Flexible and Efficient Auto-Regressive Framework for Generating High-Fidelity Synthetic Datacited by 14
- 2024A Review on Generative AI Models for Synthetic Medical Text, Time Series, and Longitudinal Datacited by 10
- 2025Joint Relational Database Generation via Graph-Conditional Diffusion Modelscited by 9
- 2024Causality for Tabular Data Synthesis: A High-Order Structure Causal Benchmark Frameworkcited by 8
- 2024LaTable: Towards Large Tabular Modelscited by 8
- 2023FLAIM: AIM-based Synthetic Data Generation in the Federated Settingcited by 6
17 more
- 2024Fake it to make it: Using synthetic data to remedy the data shortage in joint multimodal speech-and-gesture synthesiscited by 5
- 2023Privacy Measurement in Tabular Synthetic Data: State of the Art and Future Research Directionscited by 4
- 2025RelDiff: Relational Data Generative Modeling with Graph-Based Diffusion Modelscited by 4
- 2024The Minimum Information about CLinical Artificial Intelligence Checklist for Generative Modeling Research (MI-CLAIM-GEN)cited by 3
- 2025Contrastive Learning-Based privacy metrics in Tabular Synthetic Datasetscited by 2
- 2025Leveraging Vertical Public-Private Split for Improved Synthetic Data Generationcited by 2
- 2026MIDST Challenge at SaTML 2025: Membership Inference over Diffusion-models-based Synthetic Tabular datacited by 2
- 2023On the Challenges of Deploying Privacy-Preserving Synthetic Data in the Enterprisecited by 1
- 2025Beyond a Single Mode: GAN Ensembles for Diverse Medical Data Generationcited by 1
- 2025STEB: In Search of the Best Evaluation Approach for Synthetic Time Seriescited by 1
- 2025Efficacy of Image Similarity as a Metric for Augmenting Small Dataset Retinal Image Segmentationcited by 1
- 2025Democratizing Tabular Data Access with an Openunicodex2013Source Syntheticunicodex2013Data SDKcited by 1
- 2024A primer on synthetic health datacited by 0
- 2025Privacy-Preserving Tabular Synthetic Data Generation Using TabularARGNcited by 0
- 2025Using Synthetic Data to estimate the True Error is theoretically and practically doablecited by 0
- 2026Should I use Synthetic Data for That? An Analysis of the Suitability of Synthetic Data for Data Sharing and Augmentationcited by 0
- 2026CDMD: A Cross-Dataset Mixed-Type Diffusion Model for Tabular Datacited by 0
- 2026CDMD: A Cross-Dataset Mixed-Type Diffusion Model for Tabular Data30 Sep 2026
- 2026MIDST Challenge at SaTML 2025: Membership Inference over Diffusion-models-based Synthetic Tabular data19 Mar 2026
- 2026Should I use Synthetic Data for That? An Analysis of the Suitability of Synthetic Data for Data Sharing and Augmentation3 Feb 2026
- 2025Using Synthetic Data to estimate the True Error is theoretically and practically doable2 Nov 2025
- 2025Privacy-Preserving Tabular Synthetic Data Generation Using TabularARGN8 Aug 2025
- 2025Democratizing Tabular Data Access with an Openunicodex2013Source Syntheticunicodex2013Data SDK1 Aug 2025
- 2025Efficacy of Image Similarity as a Metric for Augmenting Small Dataset Retinal Image Segmentation7 Jul 2025
- 2025RelDiff: Relational Data Generative Modeling with Graph-Based Diffusion Models31 May 2025
- 2025STEB: In Search of the Best Evaluation Approach for Synthetic Time Series27 May 2025
- 2025Joint Relational Database Generation via Graph-Conditional Diffusion Models22 May 2025
- 2025Leveraging Vertical Public-Private Split for Improved Synthetic Data Generation15 Apr 2025
- 2025Beyond a Single Mode: GAN Ensembles for Diverse Medical Data Generation31 Mar 2025
17 more
- 2025Contrastive Learning-Based privacy metrics in Tabular Synthetic Datasets19 Feb 2025
- 2025TabularARGN: A Flexible and Efficient Auto-Regressive Framework for Generating High-Fidelity Synthetic Data21 Jan 2025
- 2024A Review on Generative AI Models for Synthetic Medical Text, Time Series, and Longitudinal Data19 Nov 2024
- 2024LaTable: Towards Large Tabular Models25 Jun 2024
- 2024Causality for Tabular Data Synthesis: A High-Order Structure Causal Benchmark Framework12 Jun 2024
- 2024ClavaDDPM: Multi-relational Data Synthesis with Cluster-guided Diffusion Models28 May 2024
- 2024Why Tabular Foundation Models Should Be a Research Priority2 May 2024
- 2024Fake it to make it: Using synthetic data to remedy the data shortage in joint multimodal speech-and-gesture synthesis30 Apr 2024
- 2024The Minimum Information about CLinical Artificial Intelligence Checklist for Generative Modeling Research (MI-CLAIM-GEN)5 Mar 2024
- 2024A primer on synthetic health data31 Jan 2024
- 2024Can I trust my fake data -- A comprehensive quality assessment framework for synthetic tabular data in healthcare24 Jan 2024
- 2023Privacy Measurement in Tabular Synthetic Data: State of the Art and Future Research Directions29 Nov 2023
- 2023Can You Rely on Your Model Evaluation? Improving Model Evaluation with Synthetic Test Data25 Oct 2023
- 2023FLAIM: AIM-based Synthetic Data Generation in the Federated Setting5 Oct 2023
- 2023On the Challenges of Deploying Privacy-Preserving Synthetic Data in the Enterprise9 Jul 2023
- 2023On the Constrained Time-Series Generation Problem4 Jul 2023
- 2023Synthetic data, real errors: how (not) to publish and use synthetic data16 May 2023
- 2024ClavaDDPM: Multi-relational Data Synthesis with Cluster-guided Diffusion Modelscited by 28
- 2025Joint Relational Database Generation via Graph-Conditional Diffusion Modelscited by 9
- 2025RelDiff: Relational Data Generative Modeling with Graph-Based Diffusion Modelscited by 4
- 2026MIDST Challenge at SaTML 2025: Membership Inference over Diffusion-models-based Synthetic Tabular datacited by 2
- 2026CDMD: A Cross-Dataset Mixed-Type Diffusion Model for Tabular Datacited by 0
- 2026CDMD: A Cross-Dataset Mixed-Type Diffusion Model for Tabular Data30 Sep 2026
- 2026MIDST Challenge at SaTML 2025: Membership Inference over Diffusion-models-based Synthetic Tabular data19 Mar 2026
- 2025RelDiff: Relational Data Generative Modeling with Graph-Based Diffusion Models31 May 2025
- 2025Joint Relational Database Generation via Graph-Conditional Diffusion Models22 May 2025
- 2024ClavaDDPM: Multi-relational Data Synthesis with Cluster-guided Diffusion Models28 May 2024
- 2024Why Tabular Foundation Models Should Be a Research Prioritycited by 106
- 2023On the Constrained Time-Series Generation Problemcited by 54
- 2023Can You Rely on Your Model Evaluation? Improving Model Evaluation with Synthetic Test Datacited by 32
- 2023Synthetic data, real errors: how (not) to publish and use synthetic datacited by 29
- 2024Can I trust my fake data -- A comprehensive quality assessment framework for synthetic tabular data in healthcarecited by 17
- 2025TabularARGN: A Flexible and Efficient Auto-Regressive Framework for Generating High-Fidelity Synthetic Datacited by 14
- 2024A Review on Generative AI Models for Synthetic Medical Text, Time Series, and Longitudinal Datacited by 10
- 2024Causality for Tabular Data Synthesis: A High-Order Structure Causal Benchmark Frameworkcited by 8
- 2024LaTable: Towards Large Tabular Modelscited by 8
- 2023FLAIM: AIM-based Synthetic Data Generation in the Federated Settingcited by 6
- 2024Fake it to make it: Using synthetic data to remedy the data shortage in joint multimodal speech-and-gesture synthesiscited by 5
- 2023Privacy Measurement in Tabular Synthetic Data: State of the Art and Future Research Directionscited by 4
12 most cited of 23 All 23 (JSON)
- 2026Should I use Synthetic Data for That? An Analysis of the Suitability of Synthetic Data for Data Sharing and Augmentation3 Feb 2026
- 2025Using Synthetic Data to estimate the True Error is theoretically and practically doable2 Nov 2025
- 2025Privacy-Preserving Tabular Synthetic Data Generation Using TabularARGN8 Aug 2025
- 2025Democratizing Tabular Data Access with an Openunicodex2013Source Syntheticunicodex2013Data SDK1 Aug 2025
- 2025Efficacy of Image Similarity as a Metric for Augmenting Small Dataset Retinal Image Segmentation7 Jul 2025
- 2025STEB: In Search of the Best Evaluation Approach for Synthetic Time Series27 May 2025
- 2025Leveraging Vertical Public-Private Split for Improved Synthetic Data Generation15 Apr 2025
- 2025Beyond a Single Mode: GAN Ensembles for Diverse Medical Data Generation31 Mar 2025
- 2025Contrastive Learning-Based privacy metrics in Tabular Synthetic Datasets19 Feb 2025
- 2025TabularARGN: A Flexible and Efficient Auto-Regressive Framework for Generating High-Fidelity Synthetic Data21 Jan 2025
- 2024A Review on Generative AI Models for Synthetic Medical Text, Time Series, and Longitudinal Data19 Nov 2024
- 2024LaTable: Towards Large Tabular Models25 Jun 2024
12 newest of 23 All 23 (JSON)