# Building Better AI Agents: A Provocation on the Utilisation of Persona in LLM-based Conversational Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11977 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11977/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 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 24 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 May 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [A Diversity-Promoting Objective Function for Neural Conversation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03055/) (2015)
- [Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01910/) (2022)
- [Personalizing Dialogue Agents: I have a dog, do you have pets too?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07243/) (2018)
- [Quantifying Language Models' Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design or: How I learned to start worrying about prompt formatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11324/) (2023)
- [Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06899/) (2022)
- [ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07201/) (2023)
- [Using Large Language Models to Simulate Multiple Humans and Replicate Human Subject Studies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10264/) (2022)
- [Towards Measuring the Representation of Subjective Global Opinions in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16388/) (2023)
- [Toxicity in ChatGPT: Analyzing Persona-assigned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05335/) (2023)
- [Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04024/) (2022)
- [A Persona-Based Neural Conversation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06155/) (2016)
- [Better Zero-Shot Reasoning with Role-Play Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07702/) (2023)
- [A Neural Conversational Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.05869/) (2015)
- [Language models show human-like content effects on reasoning tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07051/) (2022)
- [The Design and Implementation of XiaoIce, an Empathetic Social Chatbot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08989/) (2018)
- [A Neural Network Approach to Context-Sensitive Generation of Conversational Responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.06714/) (2015)
- [Attribute2Image: Conditional Image Generation from Visual Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00570/) (2015)
- [Exploiting Persona Information for Diverse Generation of Conversational Responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12188/) (2019)
- [Towards Persona-Based Empathetic Conversational Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12316/) (2020)
- [You don't need a personality test to know these models are unreliable: Assessing the Reliability of Large Language Models on Psychometric Instruments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09718/) (2023)
- [Can LLMs be Good Financial Advisors?: An Initial Study in Personal Decision Making for Optimized Outcomes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07422/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Personality, Persona, and Profile in Conversational Agents and Chatbots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00609/) (2023)
- [Applying the Persona of User's Family Member and the Doctor to the Conversational Agents for Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01729/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [PersonaX: A Recommendation Agent Oriented User Modeling Framework for Long Behavior Sequence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02398/) (2025)
- [Plurals: A System for Guiding LLMs Via Simulated Social Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17213/) (2024)
- [MorphAgent: Empowering Agents through Self-Evolving Profiles and Decentralized Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15048/) (2024)
- [Personalized Attacks of Social Engineering in Multi-turn Conversations: LLM Agents for Simulation and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15552/) (2025)
- [Towards Interactive Intelligence for Digital Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13674/) (2025)
- [Boosting Relational Deep Learning with Pretrained Tabular Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04934/) (2025)
- [A Tale of Two Identities: An Ethical Audit of Human and AI-Crafted Personas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07850/) (2025)
- [HARBOR: Exploring Persona Dynamics in Multi-Agent Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12149/) (2025)
- [Are Autonomous Web Agents Good Testers?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01495/) (2025)
- [How Managers Perceive AI-Assisted Conversational Training for Workplace Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14452/) (2025)
- [CrowdLLM: Building LLM-Based Digital Populations Augmented with Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07890/) (2025)
- [Pet-Bench: Benchmarking the Abilities of Large Language Models as E-Pets in Social Network Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03761/) (2025)
- [CRAFT: Grounded Multi-Agent Coordination Under Partial Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25268/) (2026)
- [Twenty Years of Personality Computing: Threats, Challenges and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02082/) (2025)
- [DIF: A Framework for Benchmarking and Verifying Implicit Bias in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10013/) (2025)
- [AI and My Values: User Perceptions of LLMs' Ability to Extract, Embody, and Explain Human Values from Casual Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22440/) (2026)
- [FactFlow: Automatic Fact Sheet Generation and Customization from Tabular Dataset via AI Chain Design & Implementation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17909/) (2025)
- [Personalities at Play: Probing Alignment in AI Teammates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00429/) (2026)
- [Introducing the Swiss Food Knowledge Graph: AI for Context-Aware Nutrition Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10156/) (2025)
- [Lived Experience in Dialogue: Co-designing Personalization in Large Language Models to Support Youth Mental Well-being](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05769/) (2025)
- [Living the Novel: A System for Generating Self-Training Timeline-Aware Conversational Agents from Novels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07474/) (2025)
- [Personagram: Bridging Personas and Product Design for Creative Ideation with Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06197/) (2026)
- [Exploring Teachers' Perspectives on Using Conversational AI Agents for Group Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07142/) (2026)
- [Explicit Trait Inference for Multi-Agent Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19278/) (2026)
- [In-IDE Toolkit for Developers of AI-Based Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14612/) (2026)
- [Exploring How Agent Voice Accents Shape Human-AI Collaboration in K-12 Group Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12805/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The incorporation of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the GPT series into diverse sectors including healthcare, education, and finance marks a significant evolution in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The increasing demand for personalised applications motivated the design of conversational agents (CAs) to possess distinct personas. This paper commences by examining the rationale and implications of imbuing CAs with unique personas, smoothly transitioning into a broader discussion of the personalisation and anthropomorphism of CAs based on LLMs in the LLM era. We delve into the specific applications where the implementation of a persona is not just beneficial but critical for LLM-based CAs. The paper underscores the necessity of a nuanced approach to persona integration, highlighting the potential challenges and ethical dilemmas that may arise. Attention is directed towards the importance of maintaining persona consistency, establishing robust evaluation mechanisms, and ensuring that the persona attributes are effectively complemented by domain-specific knowledge.