mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

PrivacyReasoner: Can LLM Emulate a Human-like Privacy Mind?

arXiv 2601.09152 ↗First posted 14 Jan 2026cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

Abstract (arXiv)

Prior work on LLM-based privacy focuses on norm judgment over synthetic vignettes, rather than how people think about a specific data practice and formulate their opinions. We address this gap by designing PrivacyReasoner, an agent architecture grounded in three key ideas: (1) LLMs can detect subtle privacy cues in natural language and role-play human characteristics; (2) a user's ``privacy mind'' can be reconstructed from their real-world online comment history, distilling experiences, personality, and cultural orientations; and (3) a contextual filter can dynamically activate relevant privacy beliefs based on the contexts in a scenario. We evaluate PrivacyReasoner on real-world privacy discussions from Hacker News, using an LLM-as-a-Judge evaluator calibrated against an established privacy concern taxonomy to quantify reasoning faithfulness. PrivacyReasoner significantly outperforms baselines in predicting individual privacy concerns and generalizes across different domains, such as AI, e-commerce, and healthcare.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 19 of its 35 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Jan 2026.

Builds on

19 of 35 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 20251-2-3 Check: Enhancing Contextual Privacy in LLM via Multi-Agent Reasoning11 Aug
  2. 2025Privacy Reasoning in Ambiguous Contexts13 Jun

Other references · 17

  1. 2019RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approachcited by 13,266
  2. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
  3. 2022Using Large Language Models to Simulate Multiple Humans and Replicate Human Subject Studiescited by 506
  4. 2023Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playingcited by 335
  5. 2024LLM Agents Grounded in Self-Reports Enable General-Purpose Simulation of Individualscited by 235
  6. 2023Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology Viewcited by 221
  7. 2023Can LLMs Keep a Secret? Testing Privacy Implications of Language Models via Contextual Integrity Theorycited by 218
  8. 2024PrivacyLens: Evaluating Privacy Norm Awareness of Language Models in Actioncited by 161
  9. 2023Simulating Opinion Dynamics with Networks of LLM-based Agentscited by 153
  10. 2024Let Me Speak Freely? A Study on the Impact of Format Restrictions on Performance of Large Language Modelscited by 90
  11. 2022TweetNLP: Cutting-Edge Natural Language Processing for Social Mediacited by 71
  12. 2020Toxic Language Detection in Social Media for Brazilian Portuguese: New Dataset and Multilingual Analysiscited by 45
5 more
  1. 2025Creating General User Models from Computer Usecited by 44
  2. 2024Beyond Demographics: Aligning Role-playing LLM-based Agents Using Human Belief Networkscited by 39
  3. 2024Exploring Prosocial Irrationality for LLM Agents: A Social Cognition Viewcited by 38
  4. 2024Privacy Checklist: Privacy Violation Detection Grounding on Contextual Integrity Theorycited by 15
  5. 2018Discovering Smart Home Internet of Things Privacy Norms Using Contextual Integritycited by 10

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

  1. 2026Rethinking Visual Privacy: A Compositional Privacy Risk Framework for Severity Assessment with VLMscited by 2
  2. 2026It Takes Two: Complementary Self-Distillation for Contextual Integrity in LLMscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Empowering Users in Digital Privacy Management through Interactive LLM-Based Agents
  2. 2024Privacy Leakage Overshadowed by Views of AI: A Study on Human Oversight of Privacy in Language Model Agent
  3. 2026PrivacyAlign: Contextual Privacy Alignment for LLM Agents
  4. 2026NeuroFilter: Activation-Based Guardrails for Privacy-Conscious LLM Agents
  5. 2025LLM-as-a-Judge for Privacy Evaluation? Exploring the Alignment of Human and LLM Perceptions of Privacy in Textual Data
  6. 2023"It's a Fair Game", or Is It? Examining How Users Navigate Disclosure Risks and Benefits When Using LLM-Based Conversational Agents
  7. 2026Reinforcing privacy reasoning in LLMs via normative simulacra from fiction
  8. 2025Explainable AI in Usable Privacy and Security: Challenges and Opportunities