PersistBench B

AI benchmark · Safety

Domains
Safety
Tier
B why
Snapshot

Full listing name: PersistBench: When Should Long-Term Memories Be Forgotten by LLMs?

What is PersistBench?

Conversational assistants are increasingly integrating long-term memory with large language models (LLMs). This persistence of memories, e.g., the user is vegetarian, can enhance personalization in future conversations. However, the same persistence can also introduce safety risks that have been largely overlooked. Hence, we introduce PersistBench to measure the extent of these safety risks. We identify two long-term memory-specific risks: cross-domain leakage, where LLMs inappropriately inject context from the long-term memories; and memory-induced sycophancy, where stored long-term memories insidiously reinforce user biases. We evaluate 18 frontier and open-source LLMs on our benchmark. Our results reveal a surprisingly high failure rate across these LLMs - a median failure rate of 53% on cross-domain samples and 97% on sycophancy samples. To address this, our benchmark encourages the development of more robust and safer long-term memory usage in frontier conversational systems.

Tier B

B

Established: 15 or more models scored, or curated RL directories rate it.

How much stands behind a tier: usage, who backs it, a confirmed line from its own site or paper, and a clear read on X. High with three of the four, medium with two, low otherwise.

  • 18 models scored
  • in curated RL directories (1 pt)
How we got to tier B
  1. Adoption: 18 models scored. Tier B.
  2. Not yet read on X.
  3. In curated RL directories: 1 point, a floor of none.
  4. Not yet confirmed by a line from its own site or paper.

A clear view on X moves a tier one step up or down; most entries don't move. How tiers work.

Not on the map yet: no line from its own site or paper places it in a domain.

Next: browse all benchmarks. Entry from the RL Research daily scrape of public sources, 2026-10-11 snapshot.