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Main Authors: Si, Xiaonan, Zhu, Meilin, Qin, Simeng, Yu, Lijia, Zhang, Lijun, Liu, Shuaitong, Li, Xinfeng, Duan, Ranjie, Liu, Yang, Jia, Xiaojun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09710
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author Si, Xiaonan
Zhu, Meilin
Qin, Simeng
Yu, Lijia
Zhang, Lijun
Liu, Shuaitong
Li, Xinfeng
Duan, Ranjie
Liu, Yang
Jia, Xiaojun
author_facet Si, Xiaonan
Zhu, Meilin
Qin, Simeng
Yu, Lijia
Zhang, Lijun
Liu, Shuaitong
Li, Xinfeng
Duan, Ranjie
Liu, Yang
Jia, Xiaojun
contents Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems enhance large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge but are vulnerable to corpus poisoning and contamination attacks, which can compromise output integrity. Existing defenses often apply aggressive filtering, leading to unnecessary loss of valuable information and reduced reliability in generation. To address this problem, we propose a two-stage semantic filtering and conflict-free framework for trustworthy RAG. In the first stage, we perform a joint filter with semantic and cluster-based filtering which is guided by the Entity-intent-relation extractor (EIRE). EIRE extracts entities, latent objectives, and entity relations from both the user query and filtered documents, scores their semantic relevance, and selectively adds valuable documents into the clean retrieval database. In the second stage, we proposed an EIRE-guided conflict-aware filtering module, which analyzes semantic consistency between the query, candidate answers, and retrieved knowledge before final answer generation, filtering out internal and external contradictions that could mislead the model. Through this two-stage process, SeCon-RAG effectively preserves useful knowledge while mitigating conflict contamination, achieving significant improvements in both generation robustness and output trustworthiness. Extensive experiments across various LLMs and datasets demonstrate that the proposed SeCon-RAG markedly outperforms state-of-the-art defense methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_09710
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SeCon-RAG: A Two-Stage Semantic Filtering and Conflict-Free Framework for Trustworthy RAG
Si, Xiaonan
Zhu, Meilin
Qin, Simeng
Yu, Lijia
Zhang, Lijun
Liu, Shuaitong
Li, Xinfeng
Duan, Ranjie
Liu, Yang
Jia, Xiaojun
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems enhance large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge but are vulnerable to corpus poisoning and contamination attacks, which can compromise output integrity. Existing defenses often apply aggressive filtering, leading to unnecessary loss of valuable information and reduced reliability in generation. To address this problem, we propose a two-stage semantic filtering and conflict-free framework for trustworthy RAG. In the first stage, we perform a joint filter with semantic and cluster-based filtering which is guided by the Entity-intent-relation extractor (EIRE). EIRE extracts entities, latent objectives, and entity relations from both the user query and filtered documents, scores their semantic relevance, and selectively adds valuable documents into the clean retrieval database. In the second stage, we proposed an EIRE-guided conflict-aware filtering module, which analyzes semantic consistency between the query, candidate answers, and retrieved knowledge before final answer generation, filtering out internal and external contradictions that could mislead the model. Through this two-stage process, SeCon-RAG effectively preserves useful knowledge while mitigating conflict contamination, achieving significant improvements in both generation robustness and output trustworthiness. Extensive experiments across various LLMs and datasets demonstrate that the proposed SeCon-RAG markedly outperforms state-of-the-art defense methods.
title SeCon-RAG: A Two-Stage Semantic Filtering and Conflict-Free Framework for Trustworthy RAG
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09710