Meet Auros: The human network behind AI

Ask an AI system a medical question and you can get an answer in seconds.

But who decides whether that answer is actually both accurate and one you trust?

That question gets harder as artificial intelligence becomes more capable. And that gets to the heart of why Auros exists.

Auros is a company built around a simple idea: the more capable artificial intelligence becomes, the more valuable human intelligence becomes.

Backed by a network of 7.6 million verified people and two decades of experience recruiting, verifying and connecting people with companies that need their perspectives and expertise, Auros provides the customer insights and human expertise that product, marketing and AI research teams need, including the human input used to train, evaluate and improve AI.

“We spent twenty years building the infrastructure to find real people, verify who they are, and connect companies with their perspectives and expertise,” explained Eric Johnson, CEO of Auros. “As AI becomes more capable, access to real people and verified human expertise becomes more valuable, not less.”

Twenty years of connecting companies with people

Auros may be a new name, but the business behind it isn't new.

The company is the parent of UserTesting and User Interviews, two industry-leading solutions designed around helping organizations connect with real people.

For two decades, UserTesting has helped companies understand how people experience the products, apps and websites they build. User Interviews expanded that ability to recruit people with specific backgrounds, characteristics and expertise for research.

Together, that work created something increasingly valuable: the infrastructure to find real people, verify who they are and connect them with organizations that need human judgment.

Now the questions those organizations need answered are changing.

“UserTesting was the perfect brand for the SaaS era,” explained Johann Wrede, CMO of Auros. “But as we’ve now moved into this new AI-forward world, what we came to realize was that we could have a much bigger impact.”

The existing names described parts of the business well. They just couldn't describe everything the business was becoming.

“We didn’t change our name to be seen differently,” Johann said. “We changed because we’ve already become something different.”

AI creates a new need for human judgment

AI can generate an enormous amount of information.

The harder problem is determining whether that information is any good.

More than half of web traffic today is automated rather than human, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish authentic human activity from machine-generated behavior and data. At the same time, organizations building AI need reliable human input to train systems, evaluate their outputs and identify where they fail.

And for high-stakes applications, simply finding a person isn't enough.

You need the right person.

“Anyone can source a thousand generalists by Friday,” Eric said. “Almost nobody can find twelve doctors willing to review a medical answer and tell you exactly why it’s wrong. We can.”

That ability to connect organizations with verified people (and the right expertise) is becoming increasingly important as companies build AI agents and models that make decisions, provide advice and interact directly with customers.

“What we know to be true at the core of our business is this network,” Johann explained. “And this network is fundamentally human.”

From usability to trust

There’s another important change happening.

Traditional software research often focused on usability: Can someone figure out where to click? Can they complete a task? Can they find what they're looking for?

AI changes the relationship.

Someone can know exactly how to use an AI assistant and still not trust its answer.

Johann described that as a shift from deterministic questions about whether someone successfully completed a journey to more complicated questions about the relationship people have with AI.

Do they trust it? Do they feel in control? Does it appear to be working in their best interest?

That requires a different kind of evaluation; and human judgment sits at the center of it.

Auros is extending the same principle that helped improve software for decades: put real people into the development process and listen to what they tell you.

Only now, the stakes can be considerably higher.

One company, three ways to put humans into the process

Auros will serve as the corporate brand and the brand for the company's AI data, evaluation and research services.

UserTesting and User Interviews will continue as product brands under Auros, serving organizations that need customer insights, experience research and research participants. Existing customer contracts and day-to-day operations remain unchanged.

That structure reflects a broader ambition.

The company isn't leaving its experience research roots behind. It's applying what it learned there to a new generation of technology.

“We’re not trying to move away from the community that we’ve worked with for years,” Johann explained. “We want to move with that community.”

The name Auros was deliberately created to leave room for that evolution. It draws from elements of aura and ethos—a reference to the knowledge, beliefs and judgment that people bring to decision-making.

Technology will change. The models will change. The ways companies use AI will almost certainly change.

Auros is betting that one thing won't: the need for people who can tell us whether the technology we're building is actually working for humans.

For Eric, that's what makes the opportunity bigger than a new company name.

“You get very few times, and many people probably never get a chance in their career, to ever work at a company that is impactful as we’re becoming,” he said. “To be working right now in this whole AI era when so much of it’s happening, being figured out…wow. That’s special.”