ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Artif. Intell.
Sec. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Volume 8 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frai.2025.1593017
Multi-Agent Systems Powered by Large Language Models: Applications in Swarm Intelligence
Provisionally accepted
- 1CY Cergy Paris Université, Cergy, Île-de-France, France
- 2None, Germany, Germany
- 3Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain
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This work examines the integration of large language models (LLMs) into multi-agent simulations by replacing the hard-coded programs of agents with LLM-driven prompts. The proposed approach is showcased in the context of two examples of complex systems from the field of swarm intelligence: ant colony foraging and bird flocking. Central to this study is a toolchain that integrates LLMs with the NetLogo simulation platform, leveraging its Python extension to enable communication with GPT-4o via the OpenAI API. This toolchain facilitates prompt-driven behavior generation, allowing agents to respond adaptively to environmental data. For both example applications mentioned above, we employ both structured, rule-based prompts and autonomous, knowledge-driven prompts.Our work demonstrates how this toolchain enables LLMs to study self-organizing processes and induce emergent behaviors within multi-agent environments, paving the way for new approaches to exploring intelligent systems and modeling swarm intelligence inspired by natural phenomena. We provide the code, including simulation files and data at https://github.com/crjimene/swarm_gpt .
Keywords: Agent-based modeling, Large language models, LM-guided agents, simulation, swarm intelligence
Received: 13 Mar 2025; Accepted: 23 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jimenez-Romero, Yegenoglu and Blum. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cristian Jimenez-Romero, CY Cergy Paris Université, Cergy, 95011, Île-de-France, France
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