I think it definitely has its uses. Is it an effective drop in replacement for sensitive data in all scenarios? I never really got that impression. My biggest takeaway was that it is excellent for development and early refinement.

Having access to synthetic data like this would let you give lower level analysts or people with lower clearances data similar to the confidential data you're working with. That's a good way to reduce costs, while also developing skills that would have otherwise been difficult to develop without providing access to the data itself.

What I found is that it's a valuable tool for bringing something up to a state where it can be applied to real data, and refined further. So, long story short would be that I think it certainly has uses, however those uses eventually lead back to using real data.