Does Persona Make LLMs K-pop Fans? A Pilot Study of LLM-Based Online Concert Audience Agents
For researchers and developers of interactive AI systems, this work provides an initial empirical assessment of persona-based LLM agents for simulating audience behavior, though the results are preliminary and limited in scope.
This paper explores whether persona-based LLM agents can recreate the collective experience of a live concert by generating real-time fan chat. In a pilot study with 11 K-pop fans, persona conditioning improved chat quality and naturalness but did not affect social connectedness, engagement, or affective response.
A concert is a collective experience, but recorded performance videos are typically watched alone, stripping away the shared audience presence that makes concerts feel eventful. We investigate whether persona-based LLM audience agents can recreate aspects of this collective experience by generating real-time fan chat alongside a K-pop performance video. We present a multi-agent system in which ten LLM agents react through live-chat messages, comparing a persona-conditioned audience (each agent assigned a distinct fan identity, bias, and chat style) with a no-persona baseline. In a within-subjects pilot with K-pop fans (N=11), persona conditioning substantially improved model-level chat quality and perceived naturalness, but did not translate into differences in social connectedness, engagement, or affective response. Interviews suggest that online K-pop concert chat may operate as collective monologue rather than interpersonal dialogue, and that meaningful participation depends on shared identification with the specific artist and fandom. Persona conditioning can make LLM audiences appear more natural, but culturally meaningful collective experience may require deeper alignment between persona, crowd behavior, fandom identity, and user expectations.