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.

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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

Oct 7, 2026, cs.AIJ/K move · Enter open · S save

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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Latest papers 76