The paper introduces LOCOMO-CONV, a conversational memory benchmark that expands on the existing LoCoMo dataset with four query styles—dialog, implicit, counterfactual, and composed—designed to evaluate memory systems in realistic conversational settings. Experiments across five memory systems reveal that conversational framing uncovers significant retrieval gaps missed by traditional QA benchmarks, particularly for implicit and composed queries, and that strong retrieval does not necessarily translate into higher response quality. The study also highlights silent grounding in implicit queries, where memory enhances contextual grounding without explicitly presenting the gold fact, suggesting a need for reasoning-based memory elaboration.
By Wen-Yu Chang, Yun-Nung Chen
arXiv:2608. 03463v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-term memory is essential for LLM-based agents to sustain interactions and reliably leverage distant history.
By Yuxin Liao, Le Wu, Min Hou, Hao Liu, Han Wu, Zishu Wang
UTILMEM is a new diagnostic benchmark that tests how conversational agents use long‑term memory, focusing on reasoning over dense histories, spotting implicitly relevant memories, synthesizing distributed evidence, and resisting interference from similar distractors. It contains 1,717 instances across five domains and evaluates a range of retrieval‑based and memory‑augmented systems. The study shows that strong performance on traditional factual recall does not guarantee effective memory utilization, highlighting a gap between retrieving information and integrating it into coherent, task‑oriented outputs.
By Peijun Qing, Fobo Shi, Soroush Vosoughi
The paper introduces Temporal Semantic Memory (TSM), a framework that improves how large language model agents manage memory by addressing two key shortcomings: temporal inaccuracy and temporal fragmentation. TSM constructs a semantic timeline instead of a dialogue timeline, consolidating temporally continuous and semantically related information into durative memory. During retrieval, it aligns the query’s temporal intent with the semantic timeline, enabling the use of temporally appropriate durative memories and yielding up to a 12.2% accuracy boost over existing methods.
By Miao Su, Yucan Guo, Zhongni Hou, Long Bai, Zixuan Li, Yufei Zhang, Guojun Yin, Wei Lin, Xiaolong Jin, Jiafeng Guo, Xueqi Cheng
arXiv:2607. 12893v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-term memory has become a foundational capability for LLM-based agents that accompany users across extended, multi-session interactions.
By Xixuan Hao, Zeyu Zhang, Zehao Lin, Yihang Sun, Ziliang Guo, Xichong Zhang, Yuxuan Liang, Feiyu Xiong, Zhiyu Li
Large language model agents have shown strong capabilities in generating coherent and contextually appropriate responses, yet robust long-horizon dialogue remains limited by the lack of external memory that is traceable, updatable, and diagnostically transparent. Existing memory-augmented agents often store memories as isolated records or overwritable states, making it difficult to preserve how information originates, evolves, conflicts, or becomes obsolete over time.