Synthetic Artifact Auditing: Tracing LLM-Generated Synthetic Data Usage in Downstream Applications

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wu, Yixin, Yang, Ziqing, Shen, Yun, Backes, Michael, Zhang, Yang
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Wu, Yixin
Yang, Ziqing
Shen, Yun
Backes, Michael
Zhang, Yang
author_facet Wu, Yixin
Yang, Ziqing
Shen, Yun
Backes, Michael
Zhang, Yang
contents Large language models (LLMs) have facilitated the generation of high-quality, cost-effective synthetic data for developing downstream models and conducting statistical analyses in various domains. However, the increased reliance on synthetic data may pose potential negative impacts. Numerous studies have demonstrated that LLM-generated synthetic data can perpetuate and even amplify societal biases and stereotypes, and produce erroneous outputs known as ``hallucinations'' that deviate from factual knowledge. In this paper, we aim to audit artifacts, such as classifiers, generators, or statistical plots, to identify those trained on or derived from synthetic data and raise user awareness, thereby reducing unexpected consequences and risks in downstream applications. To this end, we take the first step to introduce synthetic artifact auditing to assess whether a given artifact is derived from LLM-generated synthetic data. We then propose an auditing framework with three methods including metric-based auditing, tuning-based auditing, and classification-based auditing. These methods operate without requiring the artifact owner to disclose proprietary training details. We evaluate our auditing framework on three text classification tasks, two text summarization tasks, and two data visualization tasks across three training scenarios. Our evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of all proposed auditing methods across all these tasks. For instance, black-box metric-based auditing can achieve an average accuracy of $0.868 \pm 0.071$ for auditing classifiers and $0.880 \pm 0.052$ for auditing generators using only 200 random queries across three scenarios. We hope our research will enhance model transparency and regulatory compliance, ensuring the ethical and responsible use of synthetic data.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_00808
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Synthetic Artifact Auditing: Tracing LLM-Generated Synthetic Data Usage in Downstream Applications
Wu, Yixin
Yang, Ziqing
Shen, Yun
Backes, Michael
Zhang, Yang
Machine Learning
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Large language models (LLMs) have facilitated the generation of high-quality, cost-effective synthetic data for developing downstream models and conducting statistical analyses in various domains. However, the increased reliance on synthetic data may pose potential negative impacts. Numerous studies have demonstrated that LLM-generated synthetic data can perpetuate and even amplify societal biases and stereotypes, and produce erroneous outputs known as ``hallucinations'' that deviate from factual knowledge. In this paper, we aim to audit artifacts, such as classifiers, generators, or statistical plots, to identify those trained on or derived from synthetic data and raise user awareness, thereby reducing unexpected consequences and risks in downstream applications. To this end, we take the first step to introduce synthetic artifact auditing to assess whether a given artifact is derived from LLM-generated synthetic data. We then propose an auditing framework with three methods including metric-based auditing, tuning-based auditing, and classification-based auditing. These methods operate without requiring the artifact owner to disclose proprietary training details. We evaluate our auditing framework on three text classification tasks, two text summarization tasks, and two data visualization tasks across three training scenarios. Our evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of all proposed auditing methods across all these tasks. For instance, black-box metric-based auditing can achieve an average accuracy of $0.868 \pm 0.071$ for auditing classifiers and $0.880 \pm 0.052$ for auditing generators using only 200 random queries across three scenarios. We hope our research will enhance model transparency and regulatory compliance, ensuring the ethical and responsible use of synthetic data.
title Synthetic Artifact Auditing: Tracing LLM-Generated Synthetic Data Usage in Downstream Applications
topic Machine Learning
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00808