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AI-moderated studies let an AI interviewer ask your participants questions and run the whole session for you. Like a moderated interview, but automated and available around the clock. You set up and recruit for the study in Great Question as usual, the AI conducts the research session, and the recording and transcript come straight back to your study for analysis.
This is one of two AI moderation formats Great Question offers — see the AI Moderation overview for how this compares to AI Moderated Prototype Testing (beta).
Before you start: AI moderation is available to Enterprise plans only. Please contact your Customer Success Manager to learn more.

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Why It Matters

Scale without scheduling. Run far more sessions than you could moderate live, at any hour, without coordinating calendars. A single, seamless flow. Participants get one continuous experience, invite, consent, and interview, not two separate systems bolted together. Results land where you’d expect. Recordings and speaker-labeled transcripts show up on the participant’s record, ready for your usual tagging and analysis. Nothing else changes. Recruitment, screening, consent, and incentives all work exactly the way they do for any other study.

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Common Use Cases

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Set Up an AI Moderated Interview

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Step 1: Create the Study and Choose “AI-Moderated”

  1. Click New study.
  2. When prompted to choose how the study is run, select AI-moderated interviews.
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  3. Give your study a name and continue, just as you would for any other study, enable external recruitment, screener, consent, and incentives if desired, and go through that normal setup as well.
Everything you already know from external recruitment, screener, consent, and incentives works the same way. The only difference is that the interview itself is run by the AI.

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Step 2: Design the Interview in the Studio

AI-moderated interviews are designed in the Great Question studio.
  1. On the study’s AI Moderated Interview step, click Open studio after entering your research goal.
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  2. You’ll be taken straight into the studio, already signed in, no second login.
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    The studio workspace is organized into three tabs: Setup (build and edit the interview), Results (each session’s responses as they come in), and Report (the AI-generated study analysis report, see Read the Study Analysis Report).
  3. Build your interview using the guided creation flow: describe what you want to learn with your research goal, and refine the questions the AI will ask. The flow runs as a chat beside the interview canvas, and the studio can hold more than one:
    • Switch or start chats. The chat picker in the studio’s top bar lists the study’s five most recent chats and includes New chat, so you can move between conversations, or start a fresh one, without leaving the studio.
    • Close the chat. Click the close button in the chat’s header, or drag its resize handle all the way left, to give the canvas the full width of the editor. Reopen the chat from the top bar and the same conversation picks up exactly where it left off, nothing restarts.
  4. Preview the interview to experience it exactly as a participant will, including the live AI moderation. Previews don’t record anything or save any results.
  5. When you’re happy, return to Great Question by clicking Back to study in the top-left corner.
Tip: You can come back and click Edit in the studio again anytime before launch to tweak the interview. Great Question will keep showing the latest version of what you built.

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Step 3: Review What You Built, Back in Great Question

Once you’ve authored the interview, your study’s AI Moderated Interview step shows an Open studio button to jump back in and make edits, plus the outline of the interview you created. This stays in sync with the studio automatically, so what you see in Great Question always matches the live interview.
Screenshot 2026 08 06 At 3 44 55 PM

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Step 4: Review and Publish

Check all sections for accuracy. When ready, click Create to publish your study.

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What Your Participants Experience

For your participants, it’s one continuous study, they don’t need an account and have nothing to install. Here’s the journey end to end:
  1. They get your invite. The same invite you’d send for any study, using your recruitment, screener, and incentive settings.
  2. They open it in Great Question. They land on your study page, where they’re recognized from their invite link and give consent, just like a normal study.
  3. They take the AI interview. From there they move straight into the AI-moderated session: one welcome, the AI-led conversation, one goodbye. The transition is seamless, it feels like a single experience, not two separate steps.
  4. They finish, and results return to your study. When they’re done, their recording and transcript flow back into Great Question automatically.
Note: Great Question handles who your participants are, recruitment, screening, consent, and incentives. The AI interview itself is the only part run in the studio, and your participants experience the whole thing as one smooth flow.

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Manage Your Study After Publishing

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Setup

  • Plan — Adjust participant limits, incentives, study attributes, segments, and more.
  • AI Moderated Interview — View the interview outline and jump back into the studio to edit.
  • Incentives (if applicable) — Manage incentive settings.
  • Screener (if applicable) — Edit questions or update logic.
  • Emails — Customize participant-facing communications.
  • Pages — Update the Landing Page and Screener Disqualification Page.
  • Automations — Send invitation and task reminders after 24 hours.
  • Notifications — Choose which email alerts to receive.

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Execution

  • Participants — Add candidates, track progress, and manage status.
  • Recruitment Requests (if applicable) — Manage recruit requests.
  • Stats — View email performance metrics.
  • Screener Responses (if applicable) — Review responses to determine eligibility.

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Results

  • Summary — Open the AI-generated study analysis report in the studio. This tab appears once at least one participant has completed a session. See Read the Study Analysis Report.
  • Tags — Organize study and global tags.
  • Synthesis — Group highlights to identify themes.
  • Repository — Access recordings and transcripts, the same place you’d find any other interview recording. From there, you can watch, read, tag, clip, and analyze exactly as you do today.

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Read the Study Analysis Report

Once sessions start completing, Great Question generates a study analysis report for you in the studio, no setup required. Where to find it:
  • In Great Question, a Summary tab appears under your study’s Results section once at least one participant has completed a session. Clicking it takes you straight to the report in the studio, already signed in.
  • In the studio itself, the report lives on the Report tab of the study workspace, alongside Setup and Results.
What’s in it: an AI-generated analysis of your completed sessions. Findings link back to their evidence, so you can open the source response and jump to the exact moment in the transcript or recording where a participant said it. Working with the report:
  • The report is generated automatically once participants finish their sessions; generation usually takes about a minute.
  • Use Regenerate report to rebuild it after new sessions complete.
  • Use Share to create a share link, or Copy as Markdown to paste the report into another tool.
The report’s analysis covers completed sessions only. Counts shown around it, such as total invitations sent and sessions in progress, can include partial or in-progress participations, so those numbers may be higher than the number of sessions analyzed.

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Best Practices

Give your research goal real context before opening the studio. The more specific your goal, the better the guided creation flow’s first draft of questions will be. Always preview before publishing. Previews run the live AI moderation exactly as a participant will experience it, and don’t count toward your results, there’s no reason not to run through it more than once. Treat the studio as the source of truth for the interview itself. Editing happens there, not in Great Question directly; Great Question always mirrors the latest synced version.

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Troubleshooting

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do participants know they’re talking to an AI?
Yes, it’s mentioned where they reach the landing page. Where do my participants give consent — and where does the interview happen?
Both are part of one smooth flow for the participant. They open your invite in Great Question and give consent there (with your usual recruitment, screener, and incentive settings), then move straight into the AI interview without any extra sign-in. Great Question handles participant identity, consent, recruitment, and incentives; the AI interview itself runs in the studio. Their recording and transcript come back into your Great Question study automatically. Can I see the interview before I launch? Yes, use Preview in the studio. Previews don’t record or save results, so you can test as many times as you like. Will my recordings and transcripts work like my other studies? Yes. They land on each participant’s record in your study, with a speaker-labeled transcript, ready for your usual analysis, tagging, and clipping. What happens if a participant drops off partway through? Only completed sessions are kept. If a participant abandons and retakes the study, they start a fresh session. Can I edit the interview after authoring it? Yes, click Open studio from the study’s Task step anytime. Where do I see the AI-generated analysis of my sessions?
In the study analysis report. Open it from the Summary tab under your study’s Results section (it appears after the first completed session), or from the Report tab in the studio. See Read the Study Analysis Report.
Still need help? Contact us at support@greatquestion.co — median response time is 19 minutes during support hours.