Synthetic Forgetting without Access: A Few-shot Zero-glance Framework for Machine Unlearning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Song, Qipeng, Yang, Nan, Xu, Ziqi, Li, Yue, Shao, Wei, Xia, Feng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Song, Qipeng
Yang, Nan
Xu, Ziqi
Li, Yue
Shao, Wei
Xia, Feng
author_facet Song, Qipeng
Yang, Nan
Xu, Ziqi
Li, Yue
Shao, Wei
Xia, Feng
contents Machine unlearning aims to eliminate the influence of specific data from trained models to ensure privacy compliance. However, most existing methods assume full access to the original training dataset, which is often impractical. We address a more realistic yet challenging setting: few-shot zero-glance, where only a small subset of the retained data is available and the forget set is entirely inaccessible. We introduce GFOES, a novel framework comprising a Generative Feedback Network (GFN) and a two-phase fine-tuning procedure. GFN synthesises Optimal Erasure Samples (OES), which induce high loss on target classes, enabling the model to forget class-specific knowledge without access to the original forget data, while preserving performance on retained classes. The two-phase fine-tuning procedure enables aggressive forgetting in the first phase, followed by utility restoration in the second. Experiments on three image classification datasets demonstrate that GFOES achieves effective forgetting at both logit and representation levels, while maintaining strong performance using only 5% of the original data. Our framework offers a practical and scalable solution for privacy-preserving machine learning under data-constrained conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_13116
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Synthetic Forgetting without Access: A Few-shot Zero-glance Framework for Machine Unlearning
Song, Qipeng
Yang, Nan
Xu, Ziqi
Li, Yue
Shao, Wei
Xia, Feng
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Machine unlearning aims to eliminate the influence of specific data from trained models to ensure privacy compliance. However, most existing methods assume full access to the original training dataset, which is often impractical. We address a more realistic yet challenging setting: few-shot zero-glance, where only a small subset of the retained data is available and the forget set is entirely inaccessible. We introduce GFOES, a novel framework comprising a Generative Feedback Network (GFN) and a two-phase fine-tuning procedure. GFN synthesises Optimal Erasure Samples (OES), which induce high loss on target classes, enabling the model to forget class-specific knowledge without access to the original forget data, while preserving performance on retained classes. The two-phase fine-tuning procedure enables aggressive forgetting in the first phase, followed by utility restoration in the second. Experiments on three image classification datasets demonstrate that GFOES achieves effective forgetting at both logit and representation levels, while maintaining strong performance using only 5% of the original data. Our framework offers a practical and scalable solution for privacy-preserving machine learning under data-constrained conditions.
title Synthetic Forgetting without Access: A Few-shot Zero-glance Framework for Machine Unlearning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13116