Interview Agent is a powerful AI moderator available in the Discuss platform. Interview Agent activities are managed under the Asynchronous Activities section of your project. From there, researchers can create dedicated AI interviews.
Access and Availability
Access to the Interview Agent is currently available to organizations that:
- Are on a ConsumerReach or ConsumerReach+ subscription, or
- Have added the Interview Agent to their subscription
If your organization has not yet added the Interview Agent to your subscription, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information.
Creating an AI-Led Interview
On the overview page, you will see the Async Activities section, or you can navigate to the Asynchronous Activities tab within your project.
Click New AI Interview.
Choose one of the following options:
- AI-Guided Setup
- Quick Composer AI
- Import from Another Project
- Create from Scratch
Creating Your AI-Led Interview: AI-Guided Setup
AI-Guided Setup is a chat-based experience that helps researchers move from an initial research idea or brief to a complete AI-led interview.
Instead of starting with an empty question list, the setup guides you through the research design process, recommends suitable AI-led task types, and generates a complete activity based on the information you provide.
The setup chat and the Activity Builder appear side by side, allowing you to review information as it is added.
Step 1: Start the AI-Guided Setup
When you open AI-Guided Setup, the following three sections are empty:
- Research Goal
- Target Audience
- Activity Structure
Use the chat located in the bottom-left corner of the page to provide information about your study.
The builder will review your answers and ask follow-up questions when it needs more information.
Step 2: Define Your Research Goal
Start by describing what you want to learn from the study.
You can provide an initial research idea, a short brief, or detailed information about the intended purpose of the research.
The builder may ask questions to clarify details such as:
- The main topic of the study
- The business decision the research should support
- The intended use of the findings
- Whether the study focuses on a specific brand, product, or broader market
Once enough information has been collected, the builder generates a suggested Research Goal.
Review the suggested content and click Add to Canvas to add it to the Research Goal section.
You can edit the content directly in the canvas if any changes are needed.
Step 3: Define Your Target Audience
Next, describe who you want to hear from.
The builder may ask for information such as:
- Age range
- Location
- Relevant behaviors or product usage
- Purchasing habits
- Experience with specific products or services
- People who should be excluded from the study
The Target Audience information provides context for the AI interviewer. It does not recruit respondents or apply recruitment criteria automatically.
The builder will continue asking questions until it has enough information to generate a suggested Target Audience definition.
Review the suggestion and click Add to Canvas.
You can make changes directly in the canvas if needed.
Step 4: Define Your Activity Structure
Next, describe how you want the interview to flow and what you want respondents to do.
You can include information such as:
- The preferred interview length
- Stimuli respondents should review
- Screen recording activities
- Product or home tours
- Word association exercises
- Personification exercises
- Privacy-sensitive topics
- The order and overall flow of the activity
- The type of respondent experience you want to create
The builder may ask additional questions until it has enough information to generate the Activity Structure.
As you describe the study, the builder recommends the AI-led task types that best fit your research.
For example:
- If respondents need to review a website or Figma prototype, the builder may recommend a Screen Recording task with relevant follow-up questions.
- If the study covers privacy-sensitive topics, the builder may recommend Audio Only tasks.
Review the suggested Activity Structure and click Add to Canvas.
You can edit the content directly in the canvas before generating the activity.
Step 5: Generate the Activity
Once the Research Goal, Target Audience, and Activity Structure have been added to the canvas, the Generate Activity button becomes available at the bottom center of the page.
Click Generate Activity to create the AI-led interview.
The system will:
- Generate questions aligned with the Research Goal
- Add custom probing instructions for the AI interviewer
- Select appropriate AI-led task types
- Organize the questions into a logical sequence
- Insert the complete question set into the Activity Builder
Step 6: Review and Edit the Activity
Review the generated questions and confirm that the activity matches your research needs.
You can edit the generated content directly in the Activity Builder, including:
- Question wording
- Task types
- Follow-up instructions
- Question order
- Upload stimuli
- Any other activity details
You can also add STIM to supported tasks where needed.
Step 7: Save the Activity
After reviewing and editing the activity, click Save.
Saving the activity allows you to continue to the activity settings and configure the respondent experience.
Step 8: Configure the Activity Settings
Open the activity options to configure any additional settings.
Depending on the options available for your activity, you may be able to adjust settings such as:
- The AI moderator voice
- Video or audio-only capture
- Question order
- Consent form requirements
- Redirect URL or Exit Message
- Other respondent experience settings
Review all settings before launching the activity. Here is a detailed guide on setting up the activity settings.
Step 9: Launch the Activity
Once the questions and settings are complete, launch the activity and click on recruit from panel.
AI Interview Setup: Quick Composer (AI)
AI guidance is optional. For projects that already have a draft discussion guide, Quick Composer provides a non-chat setup path.
Quick Composer allows you to:
Paste a list of questions into a simple form
Automatically generate question labels and probing instructions
Import the questions directly into the Activity Builder
Editing, Regeneration, and Start Over:
Research goals, audiences, structures, and questions can always be edited manually in the Activity Builder.
If no responses exist, the setup can be adjusted and the full question set regenerated.
A Start Over option clears the setup chat and resets the activity. This option is disabled once responses exist.
Limitations:
Text-only chat
8,000 character limit per message
Once a section is added to the Activity Builder, it cannot be edited through chat
Regeneration and Start Over are disabled after responses begin
AI Interview Setup: Import from Another Project
Select Import from Another Project to copy an existing AI Interview from one of your projects.
You'll see a list of all the projects you're a member of, along with the AI Interview activities they contain. Select the activity you want to import.
Once imported, the activity is added to your project. Click Edit to review and update any questions, settings, or other details before launching.
Creating Your AI-Led Interview from Scratch
Interview Agent activities are configured using three tabs:
- Questions
- Options
- Launch
Complete each tab before launching your interview.
Creating an AI-Led Interview: Questions Tab
- Activity Name
Enter an Activity Name.
This name is only visible to members of your research team and is never shown to respondents.
- Research Goal
The Research Goal provides the Interview Agent with the overall objective of your study.
A clear research goal helps the AI ask more relevant follow-up questions throughout the interview.
A strong research goal typically includes:
- The decision you're trying to make
- Who you're interviewing
- Why you are conducting the research
- Any assumptions you're testing
- What successful responses should help you learn
The more specific your research goal, the better the Interview Agent can tailor the conversation.
Best practices:
- State the research topic clearly: Use an explicit product, brand, feature, or behavior.
- Include the research purpose: Clarify the insight you’re seeking.
- Define scope and boundaries: Add constraints or exclusions to prevent tangents.
- Use plain language: Keep it clear and direct. If you have a short summary, aim for 1–2 sentences. If you already have a project brief, you can paste a few paragraphs, but make sure the key topic and purpose appear at the very top so the AI immediately knows the focus.
- Write for both humans and AI: Clear, precise, and easy to understand.
Formula: Action Verb + Research Focus + Purpose + (Optional Scope)
Short Example:
"Explore how customers discover new meal delivery services and what factors influence their first purchase decision, excluding price-based considerations."
Sample Goals by Research Type:
- Concept Testing: “Evaluate how target customers perceive the appeal and clarity of our new product concept for a portable air purifier.”
- Usability: “Identify areas of confusion in the mobile app’s onboarding process for first-time users.”
- Brand Perception: “Understand how Gen Z consumers view Brand X’s sustainability efforts and whether these efforts influence purchase intent.”
- Customer Journey Mapping: “Explore the steps small business owners take from initial awareness to purchase when choosing accounting software.”
- Ad or Message Testing: “Gather reactions to the tone, clarity, and persuasiveness of the new social media campaign targeting college students.”
Longer Example:
We are conducting a study to understand the perceptions, motivations, and concerns of frequent air travelers regarding eco-friendly airline initiatives. Our focus is on travelers who fly at least once a month for business or leisure. The research will explore awareness of current airline sustainability programs, perceived credibility of these programs, and whether these efforts influence booking decisions. We will also investigate which communication channels and messages are most effective in promoting sustainable travel behavior. Insights from this study will guide the development of targeted marketing campaigns and potential program improvements.
- Adding Questions
Create each interview question individually.
Each question contains the following settings.
- Label: An internal label visible to your research team. Labels are never shown to respondents.
-
Response Type: Select one of the supported response types. Interview Agent supports:
- Open-ended Response
- Screen Recording Activity
- Rate
- Select One
- Select All That Apply
- Question: Enter the question the Interview Agent will ask.
- Follow-up Questions: Choose the maximum number of follow-up questions the Interview Agent can ask after the respondent answers.
You can configure up to five follow-up questions for each question.
-
Add Stimulus (photo or video): This is available for open-ended and closed-ended question types. This allows respondents to view an image or video before answering the AI’s follow-up questions, creating richer and more context-driven feedback. When creating an AI-Led question, upload your stimulus file directly in the task builder. Supported formats include:
Images: JPEG, PNG, GIF
Videos: MP4, MOV, WEBM
Multi-page documents (such as PDFs) are not supported as stimulus for AI-Led Tasks.
- Context for AI: Provide context that explains what the Interview Agent should learn from the respondent's answer. Think of this field as briefing a human moderator before an interview. The better the context, the more relevant the AI's follow-up questions will be.
Repeat these steps for every question in your interview.
Response Types
- Open-ended Response: The Interview Agent asks the question, listens to the respondent's answer, and generates follow-up questions based on the conversation.
- Screen Recording Activity: Participants record their computer screen while completing a task.
After the recording ends, the Interview Agent resumes the interview and asks follow-up questions about the participant's experience.
- The respondent's screen and audio are recorded for researchers to review later.
- The respondent's camera is not recorded. The Interview Agent introduces the task and explains how to share the screen and microphone.
- Respondents choose which screen, window, or browser tab to share.
- A Stop Recording button remains available throughout the screen recording.
- Once the screen recording ends, the Interview Agent continues with follow-up questions and records the respondent's answers.
For Screen Recording activities, you can configure:
- Website or prototype URL
- Participant instructions
- Follow-up Questions
- AI Context
Note: Screen Recording activities require participants to complete the interview on a computer. It's supported on desktop browsers only. Participants are informed of this before starting the task. The supported browsers are Chrome (v72+), Edge (v79+), Firefox (v66+), and Safari (v13+).
-
Closed-ended Responses: Interview Agent supports three closed-ended response types:
- Rate
- Select All That Apply
- Select One
The Interview Agent presents the question, and respondents select their answer before continuing the conversation.
Exit Message or Redirect URL
Choose what respondents see after they complete the activity. You have two options:
- Exit Message: Display a custom message at the end of the activity. By default, the message is "Thank you for participating in this research activity!" You can customize it with up to 800 characters.
- Redirect URL: Instead of displaying an Exit Message, automatically redirect respondents to a specific URL after they complete the activity.
Note: The Exit Message and Redirect URL are mutually exclusive. If a Redirect URL is configured, the Exit Message is not displayed.
Creating an AI-Led Interview: Options Tab
After configuring your questions, open the Options tab.
Here you can configure:
Moderator Voice: Choose the voice used by the Interview Agent.
Interview Language: Select the language used during the interview. Researchers can choose from over 50 supported languages for their interviews.
Interview End Settings
Configure:
- End date (optional): Set a specific date to automatically close your activity. This option ensures that the activity concludes on a predefined date, preventing further access by respondents after the specified time.
- Maximum number of respondents (optional): Specify a sample size to automatically close your activity after receiving responses from enough unique respondents. With this feature, you can determine the number of participants needed to complete the activity, after which it will automatically close.
Respondent Experience Settings
Configure additional participant settings, including:
-
Video Response: Choose whether respondents appear on camera during the activity.
- Yes, the respondent will be visible on video
- No, record audio only
- Consent Form: Require respondents to sign a consent form before starting the activity. Consent forms are added from the project's Overview page. Here is a guide on consent forms
- Question Order: Choose whether respondents answer questions in the order they are written or in a randomized order.
- Collect Live Interview Interest: Ask respondents whether they are interested in participating in a future live interview. Respondents who opt in are guided through the Tech Check process and can be scheduled for a follow-up live interview directly from their response page.
- Redirects: Redirect respondents to a custom webpage after they complete the activity. Use this option to send participants to another website, a thank-you page, or any other resource after submission.
Creating an AI-Led Interview: Launch Tab
Open the Launch tab after configuring your interview.
From here, you can distribute your Interview Agent activity by:
You can launch your activity in one of the following ways:
- Invite respondents from the Respondent Hub: Send invitations to respondents you've already added to your project.
- Share the respondent link: Copy and distribute the respondent link using your preferred method (email, messaging, website, etc.) so participants can join the activity.
-
Use Project Agent (Panel Recruitment)
Recruit respondents through Discuss' integrated panel using Project Agent. This option is best suited for supported use cases and regions. For more information, see Project Agent. -
Request Discuss Recruitment Services
Have the Discuss Recruitment team source and recruit respondents for your project. For instructions on requesting recruitment services, see Request Services. To learn about supported countries and recruitment capabilities, see Global Recruitment.
Screen Recording Tasks - Respondent Experience
Viewing Stimulus - Respondent Experience
The video below showcases the respondent's experience when conversing with the interview agent in a task that includes stimuli to view.
This article Self-paced Feedback for Research Respondent, is a step-by-step guide showing respondents how to complete their self-capture activity and how to answer each kind of question, including the AI-led interview task.
Reviewing Responses
When reviewing responses, researchers will see the same interface as with other self-paced feedback tasks. They can view results by task or respondent. Audio is displayed in a dual waveform layout: the top waveform shows the respondent, and the bottom shows the AI moderator.
Researchers will be able to automatically translate AI-led responses into English using the existing toggle. Transcripts include speaker labels, so it’s easy to distinguish who said what. AI follow-ups are nested under the task question to preserve the conversational flow, rather than being listed as separate tasks.
Note: Researchers cannot request a redo or create highlight reels from AI-led tasks at this time.
Example of an audio and video AI-led Task response. On the right, you have the transcript, and on the left, you have the video submission.
Example of an audio-only AI-led Task response. On the right, you have the transcript, and on the left, you have the audio submission.
Summarizing and Analyzing Responses
Researchers can use the Self-Paced Summary tool to generate summaries for AI-led audio tasks. The process is the same as with video and open-ended text responses. The system automatically filters out AI moderator dialogue, so all quotes and insights are drawn solely from what respondents say. Researchers can ask their own custom questions (e.g., “What do participants value most about this product?”), Or choose from a bank of Frequently Asked Questions.
Researchers can also combine summaries from AI Audio tasks with responses from other open-ended tasks in a single view, allowing for comprehensive qualitative analysis.
Summaries can be downloaded or saved.
The results will look like this:
Summaries can be downloaded or saved.
Note: Quotes are currently available for AI-led tasks, but researchers cannot play clips of the source audio on the Summary page at this time.
For more on the subject, you can review this article: Self-Paced Summaries With Genie
Best Practices for Creating AI-Led Interviews
For detailed guidance on writing effective Activity Goals, Task Questions, and custom follow-up instructions, see our Best Practices for AI-Led Interviews with the Interview Agent.
Interview Agent Usage
Organization Admins can view how many interviews have been used versus the total purchased. Usage is counted per respondent who starts a Self-Paced Activity with an AI-Led Conversation task. It can be viewed in the organization settings. This section is only visible for organizations that have the Interview Agent.
Language Support
Supported languages include:
|
Afrikaans Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Belarusian Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew |
Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Italian Japanese Kannada Kazakh Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Marathi Maori Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish |
Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tagalog Tamil Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh |
Supported Countries and Territories
Discuss AI Interviews is supported in over 200 countries and territories globally, including major regions like North America, the UK, Europe, Australia, India, and Japan. See full list below
Our AI partner restricts access from regions governed by sanctions, local regulations, or areas where they do not operate. Unsupported regions to note are: China, North Korea, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and parts of Ukraine.
If a respondent tries to take an AI interview from an unsupported region, they will be met with this error:
Full supported country and territory list
- Albania
- Algeria
- Afghanistan
- Andorra
- Angola
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Australia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Bahamas
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Barbados
- Belgium
- Belize
- Benin
- Bhutan
- Bolivia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Botswana
- Brazil
- Brunei
- Bulgaria
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cabo Verde
- Cambodia
- Cameroon
- Canada
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Chile
- Colombia
- Comoros
- Congo (Brazzaville)
- Congo (DRC)
- Costa Rica
- Côte d’Ivoire
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czechia (Czech Republic)
- Denmark
- Djibouti
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- El Salvador
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Estonia
- Eswatini (Swaziland)
- Ethiopia
- Fiji
- Finland
- France
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Georgia
- Germany
- Ghana
- Greece
- Grenada
- Guatemala
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Guyana
- Haiti
- Holy See (Vatican City)
- Honduras
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Iraq
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Jamaica
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kenya
- Kiribati
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mali
- Malta
- Marshall Islands
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Mexico
- Micronesia
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Mongolia
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Myanmar
- Namibia
- Nauru
- Nepal
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Nicaragua
- Niger
- Nigeria
- North Macedonia
- Norway
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Palau
- Palestine
- Panama
- Papua New Guinea
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Philippines
- Poland
- Portugal
- Qatar
- Romania
- Rwanda
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Samoa
- San Marino
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Saudi Arabia
- Senegal
- Serbia
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Solomon Islands
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Korea
- South Sudan
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- Suriname
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Sudan
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Tanzania
- Thailand
- Timor-Leste (East Timor)
- Togo
- Tonga
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Tuvalu
- Uganda
- Ukraine (with certain exceptions)
- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
- Uruguay
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
- Yemen
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Best Practices for AI-Led Interviews with the Interview Agent
The Interview Agent FAQs