AA-PersonalityBench ranks AI models on sycophantic traits

Every chatbot user has met the AI equivalent of a yes-man. You float a half-baked idea, and the model tells you it is brilliant. Artificial Analysis now has a way to measure that habit. Its new framework, AA-PersonalityBench, ranks AI models on 30 personality traits, and sycophancy is the one getting the most attention. How the personality test works Artificial Analysis announced AA-PersonalityBench on October 19, 2026. The benchmark puts 38 models through 900 curated questions covering 30 distinct traits. The models answer without system prompts. That detail matters, because it means the test captures each model’s default personality, the one you meet before any developer dresses it up. Scoring relies on panels of large language models acting as judges. They compare responses in blinded pairwise matchups, meaning the judges see two answers side by side without knowing which model wrote which. Results are expressed as Elo ratings. Think of it like a chess ladder: a model climbs by winning head-to-head comparisons on a given trait, not by hitting a fixed score. Trait scores are then converted into z-scores and percentile ranks on a scale of 1 to 100. Who flatters most, and who doesn...