mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playing

arXiv 2310.10158 ↗First posted 16 Oct 2023cs.CL cs.AIcited by 339

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Social simulation and multi-agent debate

Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) can be used to serve as agents to simulate human behaviors, given the powerful ability to understand human instructions and provide high-quality generated texts. Such ability stimulates us to wonder whether LLMs can simulate a person in a higher form than simple human behaviors. Therefore, we aim to train an agent with the profile, experience, and emotional states of a specific person instead of using limited prompts to instruct ChatGPT API. In this work, we introduce Character-LLM that teach LLMs to act as specific people such as Beethoven, Queen Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, etc. Our method focuses on editing profiles as experiences of a certain character and training models to be personal simulacra with these experiences. To assess the effectiveness of our approach, we build a test playground that interviews trained agents and evaluates whether the agents textitmemorize their characters and experiences. Experimental results show interesting observations that help build future simulacra of humankind.

Key facts. Cited by 339 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 23 of its 106 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Oct 2023.

Builds on

23 of 106 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior7 Apr

Other references · 22

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
  2. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  3. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
  4. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
  5. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  6. 2021On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Modelscited by 4,033
  7. 2022Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 3,720
  8. 2022Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructionscited by 2,724
  9. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
  10. 2022Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generationcited by 2,075
  11. 2023WizardLM: Empowering large pre-trained language models to follow complex instructionscited by 1,125
  12. 2023Neural Codec Language Models are Zero-Shot Text to Speech Synthesizerscited by 752
10 more
  1. 2019Evaluating the Factual Consistency of Abstractive Text Summarizationcited by 584
  2. 2021A Survey on Automated Fact-Checkingcited by 378
  3. 2022Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systemscited by 301
  4. 2021AI Chains: Transparent and Controllable Human-AI Interaction by Chaining Large Language Model Promptscited by 268
  5. 2022SODA: Million-scale Dialogue Distillation with Social Commonsense Contextualizationcited by 168
  6. 2023Speak Foreign Languages with Your Own Voice: Cross-Lingual Neural Codec Language Modelingcited by 167
  7. 2022PromptChainer: Chaining Large Language Model Prompts through Visual Programmingcited by 134
  8. 2019Deep Learning for Deepfakes Creation and Detection: A Surveycited by 102
  9. 2021HifiFace: 3D Shape and Semantic Prior Guided High Fidelity Face Swappingcited by 92
  10. 2022Dungeons and Dragons as a Dialog Challenge for Artificial Intelligencecited by 35

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 10; 2024: 103; 2025: 118; 2026: 108.

339 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2024A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agentscited by 634
  2. 2023SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agentscited by 367
  3. 2024From Persona to Personalization: A Survey on Role-Playing Language Agentscited by 212
  4. 2023InCharacter: Evaluating Personality Fidelity in Role-Playing Agents through Psychological Interviewscited by 179
  5. 2024UFO: A UI-Focused Agent for Windows OS Interactioncited by 148
  6. 2024CharacterEval: A Chinese Benchmark for Role-Playing Conversational Agent Evaluationcited by 143
  7. 2025A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Modelscited by 126
  8. 2024Hello Again! LLM-powered Personalized Agent for Long-term Dialoguecited by 123
  9. 2024A Survey on Large Language Model-Based Game Agentscited by 112
  10. 2024Large Language Models are Superpositions of All Characters: Attaining Arbitrary Role-play via Self-Alignmentcited by 104
  11. 2024Can LLM be a Personalized Judge?cited by 100
  12. 2024A Review of Large Language Models and Autonomous Agents in Chemistrycited by 99
38 more
  1. 2024PersonaGym: Evaluating Persona Agents and LLMscited by 97
  2. 2025Lifelong Learning of Large Language Model based Agents: A Roadmapcited by 83
  3. 2024From Individual to Society: A Survey on Social Simulation Driven by Large Language Model-based Agentscited by 82
  4. 2025LLM Generated Persona is a Promise with a Catchcited by 81
  5. 2024PERSONA: A Reproducible Testbed for Pluralistic Alignmentcited by 73
  6. 2023Igniting Language Intelligence: The Hitchhiker's Guide From Chain-of-Thought Reasoning to Language Agentscited by 72
  7. 2024CoCo-Agent: A Comprehensive Cognitive MLLM Agent for Smartphone GUI Automationcited by 70
  8. 2024LLM Discussion: Enhancing the Creativity of Large Language Models via Discussion Framework and Role-Playcited by 66
  9. 2024DailyDilemmas: Revealing Value Preferences of LLMs with Quandaries of Daily Lifecited by 59
  10. 2025SocioVerse: A World Model for Social Simulation Powered by LLM Agents and A Pool of 10 Million Real-World Userscited by 55
  11. 2024Neeko: Leveraging Dynamic LoRA for Efficient Multi-Character Role-Playing Agentcited by 52
  12. 2024SocialBench: Sociality Evaluation of Role-Playing Conversational Agentscited by 50
  13. 2024The Oscars of AI Theater: A Survey on Role-Playing with Language Modelscited by 48
  14. 2025PersonaLens: A Benchmark for Personalization Evaluation in Conversational AI Assistantscited by 48
  15. 2024ChatGLM-Math: Improving Math Problem-Solving in Large Language Models with a Self-Critique Pipelinecited by 47
  16. 2024From LLM to Conversational Agent: A Memory Enhanced Architecture with Fine-Tuning of Large Language Modelscited by 43
  17. 2024From Role-Play to Drama-Interaction: An LLM Solutioncited by 42
  18. 2025Know You First and Be You Better: Modeling Human-Like User Simulators via Implicit Profilescited by 41
  19. 2024AgentSense: Benchmarking Social Intelligence of Language Agents through Interactive Scenarioscited by 40
  20. 2024Beyond Demographics: Aligning Role-playing LLM-based Agents Using Human Belief Networkscited by 39
  21. 2024KARMA: Augmenting Embodied AI Agents with Long-and-short Term Memory Systemscited by 39
  22. 2024Evaluating Character Understanding of Large Language Models via Character Profiling from Fictional Workscited by 38
  23. 2024Exploring Prosocial Irrationality for LLM Agents: A Social Cognition Viewcited by 38
  24. 2024CharacterBox: Evaluating the Role-Playing Capabilities of LLMs in Text-Based Virtual Worldscited by 38
  25. 2024MathVC: An LLM-Simulated Multi-Character Virtual Classroom for Mathematics Educationcited by 37
  26. 2024IBSEN: Director-Actor Agent Collaboration for Controllable and Interactive Drama Script Generationcited by 35
  27. 2024ElectionSim: Massive Population Election Simulation Powered by Large Language Model Driven Agentscited by 35
  28. 2024SOEN-101: Code Generation by Emulating Software Process Models Using Large Language Model Agentscited by 34
  29. 2024Character is Destiny: Can Role-Playing Language Agents Make Persona-Driven Decisions?cited by 34
  30. 2025PersonaX: A Recommendation Agent Oriented User Modeling Framework for Long Behavior Sequencecited by 33
  31. 2023Deciphering Digital Detectives: Understanding LLM Behaviors and Capabilities in Multi-Agent Mystery Gamescited by 30
  32. 2024AMONGAGENTS: Evaluating Large Language Models in the Interactive Text-Based Social Deduction Gamecited by 28
  33. 2025OPeRA: A Dataset of Observation, Persona, Rationale, and Action for Evaluating LLMs on Human Online Shopping Behavior Simulationcited by 28
  34. 2025Enhancing Persona Consistency for LLMs' Role-Playing using Persona-Aware Contrastive Learningcited by 27
  35. 2025A Survey of Personalization: From RAG to Agentcited by 27
  36. 2024Beyond the Turn-Based Game: Enabling Real-Time Conversations with Duplex Modelscited by 26
  37. 2024Emotional RAG: Enhancing Role-Playing Agents through Emotional Retrievalcited by 26
  38. 2025CoSER: A Comprehensive Literary Dataset and Framework for Training and Evaluating LLM Role-Playing and Persona Simulationcited by 26

50 most cited of 339 All 339 (JSON)

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  1. 2024The Drama Machine: Simulating Character Development with LLM Agents
  2. 2026HER: Human-like Reasoning and Reinforcement Learning for LLM Role-playing
  3. 2024Characteristic AI Agents via Large Language Models
  4. 2026Quantifying the Utility of User Simulators for Building Collaborative LLM Assistants
  5. 2023PersonaLLM: Investigating the Ability of Large Language Models to Express Personality Traits
  6. 2026Beyond Cooperative Simulators: Generating Realistic User Personas for Robust Evaluation of LLM Agents
  7. 2026LLM-enabled Social Agents
  8. 2025Humanizing LLMs: A Survey of Psychological Measurements with Tools, Datasets, and Human-Agent Applications