mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Role-Play with Large Language Models

arXiv 2305.16367 ↗First posted 25 May 2023cs.CL cs.AI cs.LGcited by 290

Not on the map. Why?

Cited by 67 in LLM agents and tool use, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

As dialogue agents become increasingly human-like in their performance, it is imperative that we develop effective ways to describe their behaviour in high-level terms without falling into the trap of anthropomorphism. In this paper, we foreground the concept of role-play. Casting dialogue agent behaviour in terms of role-play allows us to draw on familiar folk psychological terms, without ascribing human characteristics to language models they in fact lack. Two important cases of dialogue agent behaviour are addressed this way, namely (apparent) deception and (apparent) self-awareness.

Key facts. Cited by 290 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 33 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 May 2023.

Builds on

19 of 33 references.

References · 19

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  3. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  4. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  5. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  6. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  7. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,304
  8. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  9. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
  10. 2022Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedbackcited by 2,950
  11. 2020Learning to summarize from human feedbackcited by 2,562
  12. 2022Emergent Abilities of Large Language Modelscited by 2,483
7 more
  1. 2022LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applicationscited by 1,218
  2. 2021Scaling Language Models: Methods, Analysis & Insights from Training Gophercited by 1,199
  3. 2022Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluationscited by 805
  4. 2022Improving alignment of dialogue agents via targeted human judgementscited by 527
  5. 2022Talking About Large Language Modelscited by 174
  6. 2022Language Models as Agent Modelscited by 131
  7. 2021Multiversal views on language modelscited by 6

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 28; 2024: 81; 2025: 91; 2026: 90.

290 papers.

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  1. 2024Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Directioncited by 960
  2. 2023Prompt Injection attack against LLM-integrated Applicationscited by 568
  3. 2024Scaling Synthetic Data Creation with 1,000,000,000 Personascited by 397
  4. 2023SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agentscited by 350
  5. 2023Large Language Models Empowered Agent-based Modeling and Simulation: A Survey and Perspectivescited by 253
  6. 2024Scaling Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 235
  7. 2023Better Zero-Shot Reasoning with Role-Play Promptingcited by 220
  8. 2024From Persona to Personalization: A Survey on Role-Playing Language Agentscited by 206
  9. 2023Scalable and Transferable Black-Box Jailbreaks for Language Models via Persona Modulationcited by 202
  10. 2023Survey of Vulnerabilities in Large Language Models Revealed by Adversarial Attackscited by 189
  11. 2023AI Deception: A Survey of Examples, Risks, and Potential Solutionscited by 185
  12. 2024A Roadmap to Pluralistic Alignmentcited by 175
38 more
  1. 2023RoleLLM: Benchmarking, Eliciting, and Enhancing Role-Playing Abilities of Large Language Modelscited by 173
  2. 2024Political Compass or Spinning Arrow? Towards More Meaningful Evaluations for Values and Opinions in Large Language Modelscited by 162
  3. 2025Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs Could Be Insider Threatscited by 136
  4. 2023Large Language Models can Strategically Deceive their Users when Put Under Pressurecited by 132
  5. 2025LLM Post-Training: A Deep Dive into Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 129
  6. 2023Generative agent-based modeling with actions grounded in physical, social, or digital space using Concordiacited by 119
  7. 2023FollowBench: A Multi-level Fine-grained Constraints Following Benchmark for Large Language Modelscited by 112
  8. 2025A Survey of Frontiers in LLM Reasoning: Inference Scaling, Learning to Reason, and Agentic Systemscited by 108
  9. 2025Multi-Agent Collaboration via Evolving Orchestrationcited by 102
  10. 2023Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousnesscited by 99
  11. 2025LLM Social Simulations Are a Promising Research Methodcited by 97
  12. 2023Cooperation, Competition, and Maliciousness: LLM-Stakeholders Interactive Negotiationcited by 94
  13. 2024Large Language Models and Games: A Survey and Roadmapcited by 91
  14. 2023Unleashing the potential of prompt engineering for large language modelscited by 72
  15. 2024LLM Discussion: Enhancing the Creativity of Large Language Models via Discussion Framework and Role-Playcited by 65
  16. 2024Risk Taxonomy, Mitigation, and Assessment Benchmarks of Large Language Model Systemscited by 63
  17. 2024Fight Back Against Jailbreaking via Prompt Adversarial Tuningcited by 63
  18. 2024Pandora: Jailbreak GPTs by Retrieval Augmented Generation Poisoningcited by 62
  19. 2024(A)I Am Not a Lawyer, But...: Engaging Legal Experts towards Responsible LLM Policies for Legal Advicecited by 61
  20. 2024Visual-RolePlay: Universal Jailbreak Attack on MultiModal Large Language Models via Role-playing Image Charactercited by 61
  21. 2023Experiential Co-Learning of Software-Developing Agentscited by 57
  22. 2024NNetNav: Unsupervised Learning of Browser Agents Through Environment Interaction in the Wildcited by 55
  23. 2024Risks of AI Scientists: Prioritizing Safeguarding Over Autonomycited by 49
  24. 2025Why human-AI relationships need socioaffective alignmentcited by 47
  25. 2024Emergence of Social Norms in Generative Agent Societies: Principles and Architecturecited by 41
  26. 2024Moral Alignment for LLM Agentscited by 39
  27. 2024Automatic Interactive Evaluation for Large Language Models with State Aware Patient Simulatorcited by 36
  28. 2024Evaluating Cultural Adaptability of a Large Language Model via Simulation of Synthetic Personascited by 36
  29. 2025The Personality Illusion: Revealing Dissociation Between Self-Reports & Behavior in LLMscited by 35
  30. 2024The broader spectrum of in-context learningcited by 33
  31. 2024AI Safety in Generative AI Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 31
  32. 2023Challenges with unsupervised LLM knowledge discoverycited by 30
  33. 2024LLM-Augmented Agent-Based Modelling for Social Simulations: Challenges and Opportunitiescited by 27
  34. 2025Enhancing Persona Consistency for LLMs' Role-Playing using Persona-Aware Contrastive Learningcited by 27
  35. 2024Emotional RAG: Enhancing Role-Playing Agents through Emotional Retrievalcited by 26
  36. 2025CoSER: A Comprehensive Literary Dataset and Framework for Training and Evaluating LLM Role-Playing and Persona Simulationcited by 26
  37. 2023SurrealDriver: Designing LLM-powered Generative Driver Agent Framework based on Human Drivers' Driving-thinking Datacited by 24
  38. 2023LARP: Language-Agent Role Play for Open-World Gamescited by 24

50 most cited of 290 All 290 (JSON)