Synthetics

This section covers the model training and generation APIs shared across all Gretel models.

Synthetic Models

Synthetic data models supported by Gretel APIs.

• Gretel Navigator Fine Tuning - LLM-based AI system supporting tabular, time-series, JSON, and natural language text data.

• Gretel ACTGAN - Adversarial model for tabular, structured numerical, high column count data.

• Gretel Tabular DP - Graph-based model for tabular data with differential privacy.

• Gretel GPT - Generative pre-trained transformer for natural language text.

• Gretel DGAN - Adversarial model for time-series data.

• Gretel Amplify - Statistical model for high volume tabular data.

• Gretel LSTM - Language model for tabular, time series, text data.

Supported Features

This section compares features of different generative data models supported by Gretel APIs.

✅ = Supported

✖️ = Not yet supported

	LSTM	ACTGAN	Amplify	DGAN	GPT	Tabular DP	Navigator Fine Tuning
Tag	synthetics	actgan	amplify	timeseries_dgan	gpt_x	tabular_dp	navigator_ft
Type	Language Model	Generative Adversarial Network	Statistical	Generative Adversarial Network	Language Model	Statistical	Language Model
Model	LSTM	GAN	Statistical	GAN	Pre-trained Transformer	Probabilistic Graphical Model	Pre-trained Transformer
Privacy filters	✅	✅	✅	✖️	✖️	✖️	✖️
Differential privacy	✖️	✖️	✖️	✖️	✅	✅	✖️
Synthetic quality report	✅	✅	✅	✖️	✅	✅	✅
Synthetic utility report	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Tabular	✅	✅	✅	✅	✖️	✅	✅
Time-series	✅	✖️	✖️	✅	✖️	✖️	✅
Natural language	✅	✖️	✖️	✖️	✅	✖️	✅
Conditional generation	✅	✅	✅	✖️	✅	✖️	✖️
Pre-trained	✖️	✖️	✖️	✖️	✅	✖️	✅
Gretel cloud	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Hybrid cloud	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Requires GPU	✅	✅	✖️	✅	✅	✖️	✅

Need help choosing the right synthetic model? Check out our Benchmark Report for a detailed model comparison based on real world datasets.

Model Configuration

All Gretel Synthetics models follow a similar configuration file format structure. Here is an example model-config.yaml

schema_version: "1.0"
name: "my-model"

models:
  - [model_id]:
      data_source: __tmp__
      params:
          [param_name]: [param_value]
      

• [model_id] is replaced with the type of model you wish to train (e.g. synthetics, gpt_x, actgan, timeseries_dgan, amplify, tabular_dp).

• data_source must point to a valid and accessible file in CSV, JSON, or JSONL format.

  • Supported storage formats include S3, GCS, Azure Blog Storage, HDFS, WebHDFS, HTTP, HTTPS, SFTP, or local filesystem.

    • Some #models have specific data source format requirements

  • data_source: __tmp__ can be used when the source file is specified elsewhere using:

    • --in_data parameter via CLI,

    • parameter via SDK,

    • dataset button via Console.

  • The params object contains key-value pairs that represent the available parameters that will be used to train a synthetic data model on the data_source.

    • Parameters are specific to each model type. See a full list of supported parameters in each of the #models pages.

Gretel has configuration templates that may be helpful as starting points for creating your model.

Create and Train a Model

CLI

Use the following CLI command to create and train a synthetic model.

gretel models create \ 
  --config [config_file_path] \
  --name [model_name] \
  --runner cloud \
  --in-data [data_source] > my-model.json

• --in_data is optional if data_source specified in the config, and can be used to override the value in the config.

• --in_data is required if data_source: __tmp__ is used in the config

• --name is optional, and can be used to override the name specified in the config

SDK

Designate project

from gretel_client.projects import create_or_get_unique_project

project = create_or_get_unique_project(name="project-name")

Create model object and submit for training

from gretel_client.helpers import poll

model = project.create_model_obj(model_config=[config], data_source=[training_data])
model.submit_cloud()

poll(model)

During training, the following model artifacts are created:

Filename	Description
data_preview.gz	A preview of your synthetic dataset in CSV format.
logs.json.gz	Log output from the synthetic worker that is helpful for debugging.
report.html.gz*	HTML report that offers deep insight into the quality of the synthetic model.
report-json.json.gz*	A JSON version of the synthetic quality report that is useful to validate synthetic data model quality programmatically.

*Not all models produce a Synthetic Data Quality Report. See the #models page for more details.

Generate data from a model

CLI

Use the gretel models run command to generate data from a synthetic model.

gretel models run --model-id my-model.json \
  --runner cloud \
  --param num_records [num] \
  --in-data [prompts.csv] \
  --output .

• --model-id supports both a model uid and the JSON that models create outputs

• There are many different --param options, depending on the model.

  • num_records param is supported by all synthetic models and is used to tell the model how many new rows to generate.

• --in_data is optional and used for conditional data generation when supported by the model

SDK

Create and submit record handler

# Generate more records from the model
record_handler = model.create_record_handler_obj(
    params={"num_records": 100}
)
record_handler.submit_cloud()
poll(record_handler)

There are many different params options, depending on the model.

• num_records param is supported by all synthetic models and is used to tell the model how many new rows to generate.

View results

synthetic_df = pd.read_csv(record_handler.get_artifact_link("data"), compression="gzip")
synthetic_df