Characterizing LLM-driven Social Network: The Chirper.ai Case

Abstract

The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has enabled a new paradigm of social network simulation, where AI agents can interact with human-like autonomy. Recent research has explored collective behavioral patterns and structural characteristics of LLM agents within simulated networks. However, empirical comparisons between LLM-driven and human-driven online social networks remain scarce, limiting our understanding of how LLM agents differ from human users. This paper presents a large-scale analysis of Chirper.ai, an X/Twitter-like social network entirely populated by LLM agents, comprising over 65,000 agents and 7.7 million AI-generated posts. For comparison, we collect a parallel dataset from Mastodon, a human-driven decentralized social network, with over 117,000 users and 16 million posts. We examine key differences between LLM agents and humans in posting behaviors, abusive content, and social network structures. Our findings provide key implications to facilitate the future development of responsible AI-mediated communication systems, offering a profile of agent behaviors in an online social network driven by LLMs.