User Simulation

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13 papers in the last four weeks, up 8% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

Jul 13Week of Sep 28

Latest papers 74

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MIMESIS: Learning User Simulators as Training Environments for Interactive Agents
Oct 7, 2026Hoang Phan, Dat Huynh, Andrey Zhmoginov +7User Simulation LLM Agent Training
Meta Superintelligence Labs · New York University · University of Wisconsin - Madison
Multi-Objective Aligned Small Language Model Framework for SUD Patient Dialogue Generation
Oct 6, 2026Thushara Manjari Naduvilakandy, Hyeju Jang, Mohammad Al HasanSmall Language Models User Simulation
Department of Computer Science, Indiana University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA
Joint Workflow and Prompt Optimization for User Behavior Simulation
Oct 6, 2026Nipun B Nair, Tongtong Wu, Hongzhi Yin +2Multi-Agent LLM Systems Automatic Prompt Optimization
Monash University · The University of Queensland · Xiamen University
SimTrace: Grounded Multimodal User Trajectories Generation for Online User Modeling
Sep 29, 2026Yunan Lu, Shuang Xie, Meghna Allamudi +4Synthetic Data Generation User Modeling
Shopify · Columbia University
UserProxyBench: Evaluating LLM User Simulators for Agent Benchmarks and Training
Sep 29, 2026Ashish Jain, Armaan SandhuAI Agent Benchmarks User Simulation
Sarvam AI
Social Choice Foundations for Simulation-Augmented Generation
Sep 29, 2026Sonja Kraiczy, Smitha Milli, Ratip Emin Berker +6Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation User Simulation
University of Oxford · PrincInt · FAIR at Meta +4
Persona Following Is Not Selective Control: The Neutrality Gap in LLM User Simulation
Sep 28, 2026Jiashen Ren, Wenlin Zhang, Bohan Zhang +5Persona-Conditioned Generation User Simulation
City University of Hong Kong · Stanford University
Proactive Dialogue Policy Optimization via Cognitive-State Transition
Sep 28, 2026Minghui Ma, Mengqi Chen, Bin Guo +1Policy Optimization Conversational Agents
Northwestern Polytechnical University
Screen Before You Serve: Simulation for Production Customer Experience AI Agents at 140M Scale
Sep 24, 2026Edesio Alcoba, Kevin Rossell, Aman Gupta +13Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation Customer Support Automation
Nubank · Guardrails AI
TRACER: Trajectory-Aligned Learning for Multi-Turn User Simulation
Sep 23, 2026Geng Chen, Ruotong Pan, Zhirui Yang +9AI Agent Benchmarks User Simulation
Peking University · Kuaishou Technology · Xi’an Jiaotong University +3
A Behavioral Trait Leaks into Preferences: Diagnosing Trait Interference in LLM User Simulators
Sep 22, 2026Chaehyun Kim, Sein Kim, Hongseok Kang +1Recommender Systems User Simulation
KAIST Daejeon, Republic of Korea
Mind2Dialogue: Training Human-Aware Language Models by Simulating User Mental States
Sep 14, 2026Zixuan Wang, Yufan Zhou, Jinzhou Tang +16LLM Personalization Theory of Mind
UC San Diego · KU Leuven · Johns Hopkins University +2
Are LLMs Good Financial User Simulators? A Preliminary Study
Sep 14, 2026Jiajie He, Jiangyuan Hong, Dongling Ni +2LLM Evaluation Human Behavior Simulation
1Hithink Research · 2Nanyang Technological University · 3McMaster University
Simulating Disengaged Students to Evaluate LLM-based Tutors
Sep 14, 2026Xianghui Meng, Jionghao LinIntelligent Tutoring Systems Human Behavior Simulation
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
A Three-Tier Persona Vector for Controllable User Simulation in Agentic Evaluation
Sep 8, 2026Rahul Khedar, Eshita, Sneha Teja Sree Reddy Thondapu +6LLM Agent Evaluation Multi-Turn Dialogue Evaluation
PayPal AI
Marginal Fidelity Does Not Establish User Simulation in Demographic Synthetic Survey Panels: Response Contracts, Support Collapse and Conditioning Failure
Sep 7, 2026Alexander DoudkinUser Simulation Tabular Data Synthesis
Minds AI Labs, Inc.
StudentSim: Training LLM-based Student Simulators
Sep 1, 2026Ke Yang, Chenglong Wang, Michel Galley +4Intelligent Tutoring Systems AI in Education
1Microsoft Research · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Measuring the Behavioral Fidelity of Long-Horizon Human Activity Simulations
Sep 1, 2026Yi Fei Cheng, Fan Yang, Iremsu Bas +3Human Behavior Simulation Long-Horizon Agent Evaluation
Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA · Fujitsu Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan · Fujitsu Research of America, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Data-Driven Persona-Conditioned Agents for A/B Test Simulation
Sep 1, 2026Ziyad Benomar, Weronika Łajewska, Leonardo Perelli +1Human Behavior Simulation A/b Testing
Amazon · Luxembourg, Luxembourg · Barcelona, Spain
Disclosure-Gated User Simulation for Companion-Agent Evaluation
Sep 1, 2026Yao Liu, Yu HeHuman Behavior Simulation AI Agent Evaluation
Investigating Assistant Bias in LLM User Simulators Using a Role Vector
Sep 1, 2026Daeheon Jeong, Yoonjoo Lee, Eugene Choi +2Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation User Simulation
1KAIST · University of Michigan · 3Seoul National University +2
"Act Like a 5th Grader" is Not Enough: Bounding Knowledge in LLM-Based User Simulators
Aug 30, 2026Krisztian Balog, Arild Michel BakkenComputational Cognitive Modeling Human Behavior Simulation
University of Stavanger, Norway
LiveSim: Simulating Environment-Shaped Users in Multi-Agent Live-Stream Ecosystems
Aug 27, 2026Jiaqi Xu, Yiran Qiao, Jing Chen +3Multi-Agent LLM Systems Human Behavior Simulation
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China · ByteDance China
SkillEvo: Self-Renewing Evolution Gradients from Multi-Turn Interaction Feedback
Aug 13, 2026Qianxi Yan, Chunrong Chen, Jiuzhou Zhao +3LLM Agent Skill Learning Multi-Turn Dialogue Evaluation
†Tencent Cloud Andon · ‡Zhejiang University
PatientAct: Theory-Grounded Mental Health Client Simulation
Aug 13, 2026Sahand Sabour, TszYam NG, Yaqian Chen +3Mental Health Counseling User Simulation
The CoAI Group, DCST, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Department of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China · Counseling and Psychological Development Guidance Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
INSIDE the Student's Mind: Jointly Modeling Latent Reasoning and Action in LLM Student Simulators
Aug 11, 2026Rose Niousha, Minwoo Kang, Narges NorouziLLM Fine-Tuning CoT Reasoning
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California, Berkeley
CARD: Controlled Agentic Reddit Discussions for Credit Card Simulation
Aug 10, 2026Yaoning Yu, Kai-Min Chang, Ye Yu +3Financial Services Controllable Text Generation
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign United States · U.S. Bank United States · Stanford University United States +1
Intent Speaks Louder: Controllable User Simulation Beyond Response Imitation
Aug 10, 2026Bo Wang, Ruixing Zhang, Yunqi Liu +4User Simulation Conditional Generation
the State Key Laboratory of Complex and Critical Software Environment, Beihang University
EnergyBridge: Benchmarking Household Energy Management, User Participation, and Grid Flexibility
Aug 9, 2026Xudong Wu, Zeqing Wu, Jiarui Zhang +8Human-in-the-Loop Evaluation Building Energy Management
1The University of Hong Kong · 2Tianjin University · 3Beihang University
MatrAIx: Simulating the World with 8.3 Billion Persona Agents
Aug 4, 2026Xiaomin Li, Yuexing Hao, Jianheng Hou +90Human Behavior Simulation AI Agent Evaluation
Can AI Agents Simulate A/B Test Outcomes? A Validation Framework for Agentic Experimentation
Aug 3, 2026Stefan Hut, Lorenzo MasoeroCausal Effect Estimation AI Agent Evaluation
Amazon
Beyond Borrowed Histories: Person-Aligned User Simulation for Interactive Role-Playing Evaluation
Jul 30, 2026Yuhang Zhu, Mingxuan Du, Benfeng Xu +3LLM Evaluation Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation
University of Science and Technology of China · MetaStone · MetaStone Technology, Beijing, China
Instruction-Tuned Language Models Cannot Sample from Distributions They Can Describe
Jul 28, 2026Chaemin Jang, Dongman Lee, Jihee KimLanguage Model Decoding LLM Prompting
School of Computing, KAIST · School of Business and Technology Management, KAIST
Reason-Mediated Behavioral Models for Auditing LLM Social Simulators
Jul 27, 2026Atharva Pandey, Gautam JajooLLM Auditing Human Behavior Simulation
Kairosity
A Diffusion-Model Subpopulation Digital Twin for Mobile Health Deployment: A Case Study on the HeartSteps Intervention
Jul 23, 2026Ziping Xu, Yuyi Chang, Chenshun Ni +5Digital Twins User Simulation
† University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · ‡ The Ohio State University · ⋄ Harvard University +1
SenWorld: A Digital-Twin Simulation for Generating Context-Rich Evaluation Data
Jul 22, 2026Zenghui Zhou, Xiaoyang Li, Xiaoxuan Qiao +2Synthetic Data Generation Agent Evaluation
ByteDance Inc., Beijing, China
Autonomous Information Seeking: A Roadmap for Agentic Recommender Systems
Jul 5, 2026Xinyu Lin, Yashar Deldjoo, Sunhao Dai +7LLM Agent Evaluation Recommender Systems
National University of Singapore · Polytechnic University of Bari · Renmin University of China +1
SWE-INTERACT: Reimagining SWE Benchmarks as User-Driven Long-Horizon Coding Sessions
Jun 29, 2026Mohit Raghavendra, Anisha Gunjal, Aakash Sabharwal +1Coding Agents Software Engineering Benchmarks
1Scale AI
SIMAX: A Scalable and Interpretable Framework for Multi-Fidelity and Annotated Clinician-Patient Dialogue Simulation
Jun 29, 2026Zhuhan Bao, Rui Yang, Bohao Yang +16Human Behavior Simulation Controllable Speech Generation
Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA · Duke-NUS AI + Medical Sciences Initiative, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore · Centre for Biomedical Data Science, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore +16
Cognitive World Models for Process-Level Social Influence Evaluation
Jun 28, 2026Minghui Ma, Bin Guo, Han Wang +4LLM Evaluation Cognitive Modeling
Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China · Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China
Learning User Simulators with Turing Rewards
Jun 17, 2026Yingshan Susan Wang, Cedegao E. Zhang, Linlu Qiu +5Reward Modeling RL for Language Models
Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Stanford University · MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab
Simulated Customers Never Walk Away: Decision Fidelity of LLM User Simulators Measured Against Real Purchase Outcomes
Jun 16, 2026Liang ChenHuman Behavior Simulation User Simulation
Dialogue SWE-Bench: A Benchmark for Dialogue-Driven Coding Agents
Jun 12, 2026Brendan King, Jeffrey FlaniganCoding Agents LLM Agent Evaluation
University of California, Santa Cruz
VISTA: A Versatile Interactive User Simulation Toolkit for Agent Evaluation
Jun 9, 2026Yunan Lu, Ryan Shea, Yusen Zhang +1Human Behavior Simulation AI Agent Evaluation
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, 2Arklex.ai
Does Persona Make LLMs K-pop Fans? A Pilot Study of LLM-Based Online Concert Audience Agents
Jun 5, 2026Kirak Kim, Hyojin Kim, Yejin Son +2Multi-Agent LLM Systems LLM Agent Evaluation
Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea · Department of Artificial Intelligence, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
PerceptUI: LLM Agents as Human-Aligned Synthetic Users for UI/UX Evaluation
Jun 4, 2026Nicolas Bougie, Xiaotong Ye, Gian Maria Marconi +1User Modeling User Simulation
1Woven by Toyota
When Clients Stop Following: A Cognitive Conceptualization Diagram-driven Framework for Strategic Counseling
Jun 3, 2026Yihao Qin, Junyi Zhao, Changsheng Ma +4Mental Health Counseling Cognitive Modeling
School of Information Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University
CRAB-Bench: Evaluating LLM Agents under Complex Task Dependencies and Human-aligned User Simulation
Jun 1, 2026Danqing Wang, Akshay Sivaraman, Lei LiHuman Behavior Simulation LLM Agent Evaluation
Carnegie Mellon University
Who Am I? History-Aware Profiles for Student Simulation in Tutoring Dialogues
May 28, 2026Zhangqi Duan, Shuyan Huang, Alexander Scarlatos +3Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation Intelligent Tutoring Systems
University of Massachusetts Amherst · 2Eedi
When Seekers Are Hard to Help: Evaluating Emotional Support Dialogue Systems in Worst-Case Interactions
May 27, 2026Jiajie Yang, Yangchun Li, Guanyi Chen +3Emotional Support Conversation User Simulation
Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Smart Learning · National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center for Network Media · School of Computer Science, Central China Normal University +2
Recon: Reconstruction-Guided Reasoning Synthesis for User Modeling
May 26, 2026Alan Zhu, Mihran Miroyan, Carolyn Wang +4CoT Reasoning User Modeling
University of California, Berkeley
From Static Context to Calibrated Interactive RL: Mitigating Distribution Shift in Multi-turn Dialogue with Aligned Simulator
May 26, 2026Xiaohua Wang, Jiakang Yuan, Zisu Huang +5RL for Language Models Reinforcement Learning
Fudan University
Simulating Human Memory with Language Models
May 25, 2026Qihan Wang, Nicholas Tomlin, Michael Hu +2LLM Evaluation Memory-Augmented Language Models
NYU · UMass Amherst
Toward a Benchmark for Controllable Simulation of Imperfect Students with Large Language Models
May 25, 2026Alexander Apartsin, Omri Sason, Yehudit ApersteinLLM Evaluation Language Model-Based Control
Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel. · Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering, Tel Aviv, Israel
Unlocking Proactivity in Task-Oriented Dialogue
May 21, 2026Azure Zhang, Ning Gao, Yuqin Dai +7LLM Post-Training Conversational Agents
1Keeta AI, Meituan · 2Independent Researcher · 3CUHK +1
The Illusion of Intervention: Your LLM-Simulated Experiment is an Observational Study
May 20, 2026Victoria Lin, Taedong Yun, Maja Matarić +3Human Behavior Simulation Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation
Google DeepMind · Carnegie Mellon University
SimGym: A Framework for A/B Test Simulation in E-Commerce with Traffic-Grounded VLM Agents
May 19, 2026Han Li, Vibhor Malik, Zahra Zanjani Foumani +17Tool-Using Vision-Language Agents A/b Testing
Shopify, Bellevue, Washington, USA
SimPersona: Learning Discrete Buyer Personas from Raw Clickstreams for Grounded E-Commerce Agents
May 14, 2026Zahra Zanjani Foumani, Alberto Castelo, Shuang Xie +3LLM Personalization Vector-Quantized Variational Autoencoder
Shopify · Bellevue, Washington, USA
Beyond Cooperative Simulators: Generating Realistic User Personas for Robust Evaluation of LLM Agents
May 13, 2026Harshita Chopra, Kshitish Ghate, Aylin Caliskan +3Human Behavior Simulation LLM Agent Evaluation
University of Washington, Seattle, WA · Georgetown University, Washington, DC
PrivacySIM: Evaluating LLM Simulation of User Privacy Behavior
May 12, 2026James Flemings, Murali AnnavaramLLM Evaluation User Modeling
University of Southern California

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MIMESIS: Learning User Simulators as Training Environments for Interactive Agents

Hoang Phan, Dat Huynh, Andrey Zhmoginov, Qi Zeng+6

Meta Superintelligence Labs · New York University · University of Wisconsin - Madison

User Simulation LLM Agent Training Human Behavior Simulation RL for LLM Agents On-Policy Self-Distillation

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Training and evaluating interactive language agents typically requires rich user interactions, yet collecting human feedback is expensive and difficult to scale. Simulated users offer a scalable alternative, but they must both resemble real user behavior and provide useful learning experiences for agents. In contrast, most agent-training frameworks rely on off-the-shelf assistant LLMs, whose helpfulness can make them overly cooperative, explicit, and behaviorally homogeneous compared with real users. We introduce MIMESIS, a purpose-built user simulator trained on human conversations with explicit reasoning supervision and 13 realistic behavioral patterns derived from real user interactions. Empirically, our 9B model achieves a SOUL-Index of 65.7, surpassing the strongest frontier model. Compared with Claude-Opus-5, the strongest baseline on RealUserSim and SimulatorArena, MIMESIS improves behavioral fidelity by 13.4 points and reduces Turing distance by 3.6 points, respectively. We then freeze the simulator and train an agent by interacting with the frozen simulator using multi-turn reinforcement learning. Across eight environments, training with MIMESIS yields better agent performance than training with GPT-5.5 under all nine unseen user simulators, demonstrating stronger generalization to new user simulators. Moreover, we propose Coached On-Policy Self-Distillation (CSD), which leverages simulator-generated private reasoning traces and subsequent utterances as feedback on how well the agent addresses user needs. A coach converts this information into concise coaching notes that describe how the agent can better anticipate user needs and adapt its behavior over the course of an interaction. CSD turns this feedback into dense, token-level supervision beyond sparse task rewards, yielding further gains across all nine evaluation user models.

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