An Empirical Evaluation of Using Large Language Models for Automated Model-Based Test Generation

Abstract

Large language models have shown strong potential for software engineering tasks, particularly software testing. Model-based testing (MBT) is a software testing technique. To address the broad scalability challenge for industrial adoption of MBTs, our paper presents an empirical evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) for automated model-based test generation, compared with a state-of-the-art model-based testing tool (GraphWalker) and its built-in algorithms (random and quick random for edge and vertex coverage settings). Our evaluation indicates strong potential to optimize and shorten test paths and step sizes using the recent five state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-5.1, GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and Gemini 2.5 Pro) against four GraphWalker models (two web applications (Parabank and Testinium) and two hardware applications (TLC and RISC-V) ) of escalating complexity.