Will AI lead to more accurate opinion polls?

An important development from the financial markets: Will AI lead to more accurate opinion polls? 30 April 2026 Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleJohn LaurensonBusiness Reporter, ParisGetty ImagesCollecting opinions is time consuming work"When you hear the word 'politician', what is the first image or emotion that comes to mind? "The voice is young, female, brisk and business-like and belongs to an AI agent.

A computer programme in other words. A man on the other end of the line replies. While he's airing what is a pretty cynical opinion of politicians, three other AI agents process what he's saying.

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One checks he's answering the question, one analyses whether he's being too superficial and needs prompting to go deeper, while the third checks that the respondent is not a fraud… not a robot, for example. This poll is being conducted by a French AI opinion poll company called Naratis. "The US has start-ups like Outset, Listen Labs and Hey Marvin that do AI polling like this in the commercial sphere.

To my knowledge we're the first to do this for political opinion polling as well," says Pierre Fontaine, the 28-year-old engineer who founded the firm in 2025. What was once the most labour-intensive corner of opinion research is becoming one of its most automated. In France, as elsewhere, that shift is beginning to reshape how public opinion is measured, understood - and potentially influenced.

Naratis aims to take qualitative research - the slowest, most expensive form of polling - and rebuild it around AI. Traditionally, qualitative studies involve small groups or one-on-one interviews with paid respondents recruited via panels. These interviews can take weeks to conduct and analyse.

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Naratis replaces that process with conversational AI. It does not focus on quantitative polling, which is already largely automated through mass surveys. Instead, it emphasises depth.

"We don't ask people to tick boxes - they have a conversation with an AI," Fontaine explains. "That means we can explore not just what people think, but how they think - how they build their opinions, and even when those opinions change. "The company claims its method is "10 times faster, 10 times cheaper and 90% as accurate as human polling".

A study that once took weeks and tens of thousands of euros can now be completed in a day or two. Responses can often be gathered in under 24 hours, allowing clients to react to events almost in real time. This speed comes from what Fontaine calls "parallelisation": instead of human interviewers working one by one, AI agents can conduct many interviews simultaneously.

Financial markets are tracking the development closely as investors assess the likely impact.