SurveyMonkey unveils AI that can draft surveys in just 30 seconds

For years, SurveyMonkey has helped companies create questionnaires to gather and analyze feedback from employees, customers, and the public at large.

Now, the company is rolling out a new generative AI tool designed to let users craft an effective survey in as little as 30 seconds. The new feature, called Build with AI and powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology, will automatically draft a survey based on a prompt provided by a user, similar to other AI-enabled writing and illustration tools.

“It will create a survey that, in many cases, is good to go out the door,” says SurveyMonkey CEO Eric Johnson, though users who want to tweak questions before sending them are free to do so.

Johnson says he envisions users harnessing the AI technology for everything from HR surveys about benefits options to quick polls about what kind of pizza to order for a company softball game. The feature will likely be particularly useful for new users and those creating new types of surveys for their organizations, he says. 

“[For] the novice user, this becomes really interesting because you get to a place where you’re producing a research-quality survey with a fairly simple question prompt,” he says.

The new feature builds on years of AI developments at SurveyMonkey, which have been collectively marketed as SurveyMonkey Genius, and on templates SurveyMonkey offers for everything from purchase satisfaction questionnaires to Super Bowl party signups. The company’s tools can already offer feedback on draft surveys, designed to maximize response rates, and help make questions as useful as possible at drawing out meaningful input. 

Other existing AI features include automated analysis to categorize responses by positive or negative sentiment and weed out nonsense replies. SurveyMonkey’s AI is built on decades of experience helping users give surveys, which collectively see 20 million questions answered daily on the platform, Johnson says. 

“We frankly know what good looks like, and our AI tools and our templates have been built to date using that expertise,” he says.

Johnson says the AI features are built to preserve privacy and security, with the platform able to learn in the aggregate what types of survey questions perform well without leaking information about particular sensitive survey content and responses. SurveyMonkey will also be tracking how users find the new AI features, including what kinds of response rates AI-generated surveys produce.

The new feature supports surveys in more than 50 languages, and it’s available to all SurveyMonkey accounts, including those on free plans.