Latency and Factual Accuracy in Generative AI: An Empirical Analysis of Model Performance, User Satisfaction, and the Role of Prompt Complexity
Pit Pichappan
Journal of Data Processing, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2026.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6025/jdp/2026/16/3/119-142
Link: https://www.dline.info/jdp/fulltext/v16n3/jdpv16n3_1.pdf
Abstract:
The rapid deployment of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs)
necessitates a careful balance between computational efficiency, factual accuracy, and user satisfaction.
While existing research often evaluates these dimensions in isolation, this study proposes an integrated
empirical framework to analyze their combined influence on overall GenAI performance. Utilizing a dataset
of 1,000 simulated AI usage sessions across six state of the art models (e.g., Claude 3.7, GPT-4o, Llama 3.1)
and diverse application domains, we conducted correlation analyses, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS)
regression, and statistical validation tests. Results indicate that prompt length is the dominant positive
predictor of response latency, significantly outweighing the impact of decoding hyperparameters like
temperature and Top-P. Among the evaluated models, Claude 3.7 demonstrated the optimal balance,
achieving the highest success rate and user satisfaction alongside a comparatively low hallucination rate.
Notably, task-specific analysis revealed that while translation tasks yielded the highest reliability, Retrieval-
Augmented Generation (RAG) tasks exhibited unexpectedly high hallucination rates, suggesting that retrieval
augmentation alone does not guarantee factual grounding. Furthermore, statistical validation confirmed
the superiority of a proposed multi-layered â€œDouble Lockâ€ guardrail framework over baseline regex methods.
Ultimately, this study indicated that concise prompt engineering and task specific model selection are more
critical for optimizing LLM deployment than model identity alone, providing actionable insights for
developing reliable, user centric AI systems.