Can AI read the room? Predicting policy sentiment with synthetic personas

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy& Ideation Center, September 26, 2026

by Dima Sayess, Fatima Koaik, Robin Schnider, Pujen Shrestha, George Farajallah, and Dario Krpan





For policymakers, understanding how the public is likely to respond to a new or reformed policy is crucial to that policy’s successful implementation and uptake. Yet measuring policy sentiment through surveys and experiments is often slow, costly, and challenging to scale— especially when the room that policymakers are trying to read is an entire country. The burgeoning field of generative AI presents a new approach to this persistent challenge through the use of synthetic personas.

Synthetic personas are artificial entities generated by large language models (LLMs) to simulate human responses. Studies have found that they can mimic human decision-making with a moderate to high degree of accuracy, and they offer a tool for exploring public responses when traditional approaches are constrained by time, cost, or feasibility. Now, Strategy&’s Ideation Center has extended this research for Middle East policymakers by studying the ability of synthetic personas to predict policy sentiment in three Gulf countries. Read the rest here.

From roots to relevance: Making Arabic the language of opportunity for MENA’s young people

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Congress of Arabic & Creative Industries/PwC Strategy&, September 25, 2026




The future of Arabic is the young people of the MENA region. They are the ultimate arbiters of Arabic’s role in their lives. They will determine Arabic’s relevance in the Digital Era.

This reality was a primary impetus behind the 2025 Ipsos/Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre Arab Youth Pulse Survey. The survey explores how Arabic relates to the creative aspirations and technological outlook of 4,092 respondents aged 18–25 across 10 MENA countries, alongside the economic challenges they face.

The survey found that Arabic is the dominant language across all aspects of young people’s lives in the region. It is particularly meaningful to MENA youth in social and cultural contexts. Arabic connects them to their families and friends: 91% of respondents use it at home and 85% of them use it with friends. Arabic also serves as a strong anchor to their cultural heritage: slightly more than three-quarters of the respondents (76%) said that Arabic connects them to their roots.

Arabic’s dominance also extends to education, work, online learning, and other digital contexts, but in these contexts, its usage among MENA youth is less prevalent than in social and cultural contexts. The survey respondents report that their use of Arabic falls off at school and work, as well as in digital activities. Correspondingly, their use of English increases significantly in these contexts, with slightly more than three-quarters of the respondents (77%) saying that English is essential for achieving their goals. In short, Arabic is not always the language of opportunity for MENA youth.

This linguistic dichotomy highlights the primary challenge facing Arabic in the Digital Era. The salient issue in this challenge is the gap in Arabic’s educational, professional, and digital utility. The future of the Arabic language depends on closing this utility gap and extending Arabic’s relevance among the 140 million people under age 30 in the MENA region. Read the rest here.