Conversational Agents

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Overview

Conversational agents study how AI systems understand and respond to people across multiple turns, from identifying intents and tracking dialogue state to helping with tasks, learning, and support. Common approaches combine language models with retrieval, tools, dialogue planning, reinforcement learning, and memory; voice and multimodal systems also address speech, turn-taking, and visual or sensor input. Evaluation ranges from task-oriented benchmarks such as MultiWOZ and τ-Bench to end-to-end voice tests and studies with users in settings like education, health, and customer service. A central challenge is that fluent, satisfying responses do not guarantee reliable task completion, appropriate intervention, or safe behavior over long interactions, while simulations and automatic judges may not reflect real users well.

Latest papers

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292 papers29 papers in the last four weeks, down 17% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. A prospective randomized study of patient-centered AI for clinical visit preparation

    Oct 30, 2026Xincheng Tan, Matthew Thompson, Xiang Ji +33Medical AI AgentsConversational Agents

    Google Research

  2. When to Assist and What to Suggest: Joint Gating and Memory-Grounded Hint Generation in One Compact Decoder

    Oct 29, 2026A. J. A. Jubayer Talukder, Mohammad Ariful HaqueConversational AgentsMemory-Augmented Language Model Agents

    Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, 1205, Bangladesh

  3. The Artificial Personality Model: Theory, Implementation, Measurement and Experimental Validation in Conversational Agents

    Oct 28, 2026Alexander Dregger, Barbarella Petz, Erik Kuhn +4Human-Computer InteractionPersonality Modeling in Language Models

    Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstr. 89, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany · Innovation, Strategy and Transfer, FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10–14, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany · Department of Computer Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 25, 12489 Berlin, Germany +2

  4. EREBOTS 4.0: A framework for conversational assistants with A2A agents and MCP tools

    Oct 26, 2026Elia Pacioni, Davide Calvaresi, Andrei C. Coman +4Multi-Agent LLM SystemsLLM Agents

    HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Rue de Technopôle 10, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland · University of Extremadura, 06800, Mérida, Spain

  5. Whale You Go Green? Immediate and Longitudinal Effects of Embodied Conversational AI Avatars on Sustainable Behavioral Tendencies and Pro-Environmental Attitudes

    Oct 23, 2026Rachel Poonsiriwong, Pat PataranutapornEmbodied Conversational AgentsHuman-AI Interaction

    MIT Media Lab Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

  6. From Deliberately Constructed Systemic Representations of the World of Activity to Dialogue: A Five-Level Communication Architecture for Strong Language-Based ASI

    Oct 23, 2026Maxim OsovskyLLM GroundingKnowledge Representation

    Adam University, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

  7. CounselPlex: A Stressor-Aware Full-Duplex Counseling Model

    Oct 23, 2026Yeonju Kim, Bella Godiva, Yong Man RoConversational AgentsFull-Duplex Spoken Dialogue Systems

    Integrated Vision and Language Lab, KAIST, South Korea

  8. Dialogue Generation for Conversational Recommendation Using User Search Interactions and Knowledge Graphs

    Oct 18, 2026Minsung Hwang, Donggyu Yoon, Gowoon Hwang +2Text GenerationRecommender Systems

    School of Computing, KAIST Daejeon, Republic of Korea · LG Electronics Seoul, Republic of Korea · Department of AI Computing, KAIST Daejeon, Republic of Korea

  9. Legal Guidance in the Wild: How Users Seek Legal Help in Real-World LLM Conversations

    Oct 18, 2026Amirreza Mohseni, Gerasimos SpanakisConversational Agents

    Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

  10. JAVIS: Joint Audio-Visual Interaction and Streaming for Real-Time Conversational Agents

    Oct 15, 2026Junseok Ahn, Jaehyun Park, Jeongsoo Choi +2Audio-Video GenerationConversational Agents

    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea · Chung-Ang University, South Korea

  11. ARGUS: An Agenda-Driven Framework for Reliable User Simulation

    Oct 15, 2026Hang Zheng, Nan Jiang, Zichen Zhu +6Task-Oriented Dialogue SystemsUser Simulation

    X-LANCE Lab, School of Computer Science, MoE Key Lab of Artificial Intelligence SJTU AI Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · Jiangsu Key Lab of Language Computing, Suzhou, China · AISpeech Co., Ltd., Suzhou, China +1

  12. What do AI chatbots do after users decline therapeutic redirection for suicide thoughts?

    Oct 15, 2026Subigya Nepal, Ruth Heo, Emma M Parrish +1Conversational AgentsLLM Safety Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (Nepal) · Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla (Heo, Parrish, Depp) · VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, California (Parrish)

  13. Stop Training Against Soft Users: Mentalized Adversarial Self-Play for Proactive Dialogue

    Oct 15, 2026Zanwu Liu, Dan Zhang, Xiaodi Wang +6Conversational AgentsProactive Agents

    School of Artificial Intelligence, Beihang University, Beijing, China · Dongchezu Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing, China

  14. ixi-sLM: On-Device sLM for AI Call Agent Service

    Oct 14, 2026Han-Sang Lee, Kyuho Lee, Juneyoung Park +10On-Device Language Model InferenceSmall Language Models

    LG Uplus · OptAI Inc.

  15. InterviewPlayground: A Validated Simulation Environment for Evaluating AI Interviewers

    Oct 8, 2026Jonathan Ivey, Aimee Liang, Arthur Y. S. Wang +3Conversational AgentsMulti-Turn Dialogue Evaluation

    Johns Hopkins University · Listen Labs

  16. Evidence-Traceable Dynamic Interviewer Architecture for Expertise-Adaptive Qualitative Interviews Using Local LLMs

    Oct 8, 2026Aisvarya Adeseye, Jouni Isoaho, Adeyemi Adeseye +2Conversational AgentsLLM Agent Evaluation

    Department of Computing, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

  17. How assigned AI use before class shapes active student engagement in class

    Oct 7, 2026Dan J. Wang, Neelam Modi Jain, Vanessa Burbano +5AI in EducationHuman-AI Interaction

    Management Division, Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.

  18. Coupled but Late: Turn-Taking Between Full-Duplex Speech Models in Unscripted Dialogue

    Oct 6, 2026Lichen Zhu, Yueqian Lin, Yiheng Wang +2Turn-Taking in DialogueFull-Duplex Spoken Dialogue Systems

    Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

  19. Hiding Tool Latency in On-Device Cascaded Voice Agent through Speculative Execution

    Oct 6, 2026Kyudan Jung, Hyunsin Park, Yoonhyung Lee +5Conversational Agents

    Qualcomm AI Research · KAIST AI

  20. Jarvis: A Proactive Speech Agent for Multi-Party Conversations

    Oct 5, 2026Seunghyun Oh, Hirotaka Hiraki, Shuyue Stella Li +2Conversational AgentsProactive Agents

    Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, WA, USA · Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan

  21. Mind the Accent Gap: British Accent Robustness in Speech-Driven Financial Voice Assistants

    Oct 5, 2026Aadam Haq, Oggi Rudovic, Malcolm Chadwick +5ASR EvaluationVoice Agent Evaluation

    NatWest, UK

  22. VoCa: Designing Speech-Canvas Interaction for Voice-Based Conversational Agents

    Oct 3, 2026Yate Ge, Run Yuan, Yueran Qi +7Human-AI InteractionHuman-Computer Interaction

    Tongji University Shanghai, China · Grinnell College Grinnell, Iowa, United States · Hunan University Changsha, Hunan, China +1

  23. ConvoDrift: A Multi-Turn Conversational Dataset for Modeling Stylistic Tone Evolution

    Oct 2, 2026Vihindi Kotalawala, Pamoda Dilranga, Gayani Thoradeniya +1Conversational AgentsPersonalized Language Model Alignment

    Informatics Institute of Technology, Sri Lanka · Independant Researcher, Sri Lanka · National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia +1

  24. Richard: Voice-First Mobile Interaction for Persistent Tasks

    Sep 30, 2026Xinyang ChenSpoken Dialogue SystemsConversational Agents

  25. RealWorldShop: Benchmarking and Improving Conversational Shopping Agents in Real-World E-commerce

    Sep 30, 2026Xinwei Yang, Kelong Mao, Yudong Guo +4LLM Agent EvaluationAI Agent Benchmarks

    College of Computer Science, Sichuan University · Engineering Research Center of Machine Learning and Industry Intelligence, Ministry of Education, China · Institute of Data Science, National University of Singapore

  26. Positive Ratings, Hidden Concerns: Employee Voice Disclosure in AI-Mediated Organizational Listening

    Sep 30, 2026Thilo Tamme, Michael Saatkamp, Alma Bonte +3Conversational Agents

    Technical University of Munich · LMU Munich · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  27. Persona and Persuasive Framing in AI Voice Agents: A 2×22\times2 Field Experiment with Children

    Sep 30, 2026Thilo Tamme, David Steck, Anton HantelHuman-AI InteractionFraming Effects in Language Models

    Technical University of Munich · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  28. VAmoS Part Deux: Harder, More Realistic Voice-Agent Simulation

    Sep 29, 2026Joshua Meyer, Sahar Shayegan, Ritiz Tambi +5Voice Agent EvaluationLLM Agent Evaluation

    Veris AI

  29. ThuRunel: Dynamic Decoupling for Structured Advisory Dialogue

    Sep 28, 2026Yuyan ChenConversational AgentsHuman-AI Decision Making

    ModelsLive Inc.

  30. Right Words, Wrong Moment: A Clinician-Grounded Analysis of Distress in 19,930 Conversations between Young People and ChatGPT

    Sep 28, 2026Marx Wang, Ella Zhang, Cameron Tan +11Emotional Support ConversationHuman-AI Interaction

    University of Washington, United States · University of Oxford, United Kingdom · Stanford University, United States +2