Researchers have introduced PACT (Pressure-Applied Compliance Testing), a new benchmarking framework designed to evaluate the reliability of enterprise-grade LLM agents in following regulatory rules under psychological or situational pressure. Unlike standard evaluations, PACT utilizes forty-eight realistic multi-turn conversation scenarios across twelve regulated enterprise domains, such as finance and healthcare. The methodology pits standing compliance rules against tempting rule-violating shortcuts, applying various pressures through diverse wordings and system-prompt modes to ensure the benchmark is ungameable and avoids eliciting evaluation-aware behavior. The authors developed PACTScore, a reliability-weighted compliance rate derived from six distinct metrics that assess robustness, transparency, and rule discernment throughout multi-turn dialogues. Testing conducted across 22 LLM models revealed significant vulnerabilities: even high-performing assistants incorrectly apply rules in 6% to 10% of cases. Most notably, the study found that typical user pressure increases rule violation rates by an average of 65%. These findings demonstrate that current LLM assistants exhibit substantial variability in compliance, highlighting critical risks for deployment in sensitive corporate environments and emphasizing the urgent need for robust guardrails and more rigorous model selection processes.

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