AI moderated questions help you go beyond written responses with speak aloud questions. The AI moderator will ask your question out loud and prompt participants to respond aloud instead of typing answers.
The AI moderator will automatically adjust to your set probe level and can follow up when answers are too brief or off-track, helping reduce low-quality answers and helping you gather more thoughtful, in-depth insights.
Find out more about how it works and how to get set up in this help doc.
Getting set up
As a study creator, you can choose to add an AI moderated question to your survey in the Study Flow.
Here's what to know when using this question type:
Audio is required for all participants
Video can be set to required, optional, off via Edit Settings or Survey Setup > Settings tab.
Use the AI moderator probe depth slider to control your preferences for follow-up
You can control when AI moderated questions appear:
Mark the question as Optional (participants can skip)
Use Display Logic to hide or show an AI moderated question based on earlier responses.
You cannot use the show all questions on one page option when you've added AI moderated questions.
Please note that the AI moderated questions is currently built to support questions in English.
Important notes:
The AI moderator does not take into context written or spoken answers to other questions in the survey. Please treat each question independently.
If you are interested in an AI Interviewer that is built to incorporate context, please review the future roadmap section at the bottom of this page.
Responses to AI-moderated questions cannot be used for display or branching logic.
How follow-ups work
The AI moderator can automatically ask follow-up questions to improve response quality and depth. It will prompt participants to expand on short or unclear responses e.g. nah, I don't know and doesn't accept irrelevant answers e.g. gibberish
The level of follow-up is guided by your selected follow-up depth as well as your study goals. While study goals is optional, we recommend using this as a best practice to help guide the AI Interviewer on follow-up questions.
Tips for writing an AI moderated questions
Keep your prompt:
Open-ended. Avoid yes/no questions.
Clear and focused. Stick to one idea per question.
Designed for conversation. Encourage participants to reflect, describe, and explain.
The participant experience
If a survey includes AI moderated questions, the participant will see an introductory page letting them know that the survey includes AI-spoken questions before answering any written or AI moderated questions.
Before the first AI moderated question, there will be a page letting the participant know that the next question is AI moderated. The browser will then ask for permissions to the participant's microphone (required) and/or camera (off, optional or required as determined by the study creator). Any further AI moderated questions will not need additional set up.
To learn more about getting started with supported browsers and operating systems, they can visit this help document.
When participants are ready, they can start the conversation. If the question has been marked as optional by the survey creator, the participant will also see a skip question option. Participants will hear the question read aloud to them.
The AI Moderator will suggest to the participant to click Submit once the conversation has naturally come to an end. A participant can also click Submit at any time if they want to move forward in the survey.
Reviewing Results
Optimal will incorporate these recordings into the automated AI insights - Identified themes.
Each insight will be supported with a highlight reel available to be reviewed via the View reel button.
Identified themes
Expanded theme
You can click View reel to download the highlight reel.
The participant answer section
You can also review and download individual responses under the Participant answer section with View recording and option to download the recording.
You'll get a clear, concise answer summary along with the option to expand and see the relevant part of the transcript.
Future Roadmap: AI Interviewer
We will be bringing an AI Interviewer to Optimal. Guided by your study context, discussion guide, and research goals, the AI Interviewer can adapt intelligently in real-time.
Customize a discussion guide, response patterns, and follow-up propensity to match your research preferences. You can then review automated key themes, insights, citations, transcripts, and highlight reels and use AI Chat to dig deeper.