  This explainer document aims to provide an overview of the current state of
the rapidly expanding work on synthetic data technologies, with a particular
focus on privacy. The article is intended for a non-technical audience, though
some formal definitions have been given to provide clarity to specialists. This
article is intended to enable the reader to quickly become familiar with the
notion of synthetic data, as well as understand some of the subtle intricacies
that come with it. We do believe that synthetic data is a very useful tool, and
our hope is that this report highlights that, while drawing attention to
nuances that can easily be overlooked in its deployment.
