SAGE: Exploring the Boundaries of Unsafe Concept Domain with Semantic-Augment Erasing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhu, Hongguang, Wei, Yunchao, Wang, Mengyu, Jiao, Siyu, Fang, Yan, Huang, Jiannan, Zhao, Yao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhu, Hongguang
Wei, Yunchao
Wang, Mengyu
Jiao, Siyu
Fang, Yan
Huang, Jiannan
Zhao, Yao
author_facet Zhu, Hongguang
Wei, Yunchao
Wang, Mengyu
Jiao, Siyu
Fang, Yan
Huang, Jiannan
Zhao, Yao
contents Diffusion models (DMs) have achieved significant progress in text-to-image generation. However, the inevitable inclusion of sensitive information during pre-training poses safety risks, such as unsafe content generation and copyright infringement. Concept erasing finetunes weights to unlearn undesirable concepts, and has emerged as a promising solution. However, existing methods treat unsafe concept as a fixed word and repeatedly erase it, trapping DMs in ``word concept abyss'', which prevents generalized concept-related erasing. To escape this abyss, we introduce semantic-augment erasing which transforms concept word erasure into concept domain erasure by the cyclic self-check and self-erasure. It efficiently explores and unlearns the boundary representation of concept domain through semantic spatial relationships between original and training DMs, without requiring additional preprocessed data. Meanwhile, to mitigate the retention degradation of irrelevant concepts while erasing unsafe concepts, we further propose the global-local collaborative retention mechanism that combines global semantic relationship alignment with local predicted noise preservation, effectively expanding the retentive receptive field for irrelevant concepts. We name our method SAGE, and extensive experiments demonstrate the comprehensive superiority of SAGE compared with other methods in the safe generation of DMs. The code and weights will be open-sourced at https://github.com/KevinLight831/SAGE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09363
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SAGE: Exploring the Boundaries of Unsafe Concept Domain with Semantic-Augment Erasing
Zhu, Hongguang
Wei, Yunchao
Wang, Mengyu
Jiao, Siyu
Fang, Yan
Huang, Jiannan
Zhao, Yao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Diffusion models (DMs) have achieved significant progress in text-to-image generation. However, the inevitable inclusion of sensitive information during pre-training poses safety risks, such as unsafe content generation and copyright infringement. Concept erasing finetunes weights to unlearn undesirable concepts, and has emerged as a promising solution. However, existing methods treat unsafe concept as a fixed word and repeatedly erase it, trapping DMs in ``word concept abyss'', which prevents generalized concept-related erasing. To escape this abyss, we introduce semantic-augment erasing which transforms concept word erasure into concept domain erasure by the cyclic self-check and self-erasure. It efficiently explores and unlearns the boundary representation of concept domain through semantic spatial relationships between original and training DMs, without requiring additional preprocessed data. Meanwhile, to mitigate the retention degradation of irrelevant concepts while erasing unsafe concepts, we further propose the global-local collaborative retention mechanism that combines global semantic relationship alignment with local predicted noise preservation, effectively expanding the retentive receptive field for irrelevant concepts. We name our method SAGE, and extensive experiments demonstrate the comprehensive superiority of SAGE compared with other methods in the safe generation of DMs. The code and weights will be open-sourced at https://github.com/KevinLight831/SAGE.
title SAGE: Exploring the Boundaries of Unsafe Concept Domain with Semantic-Augment Erasing
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09363