2025/01/16 by Ibtihel Amara, Ahmed Imtiaz Humayun, Amara, Ibtihel +26 · 6 citations
Computer Science · #Advanced Text Analysis Techniques #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.09833
openalex publication_date 2025/01/16 · openalex created_date 2025/01/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Concept erasure techniques have recently gained significant attention for their potential to remove unwanted concepts from text-to-image models. While these methods often demonstrate promising results in controlled settings, their robustness in real-world applications and suitability for deployment remain uncertain. In this work, we (1) identify a critical gap in evaluating sanitized models, particularly in assessing their performance across diverse concept dimensions, and (2) systematically analyze the failure modes of text-to-image models post-erasure. We focus on the unintended consequences of concept removal on non-target concepts across different levels of interconnected relationships including visually similar, binomial, and semantically related concepts. To address this, we introduce EraseBench, a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating post-erasure performance. EraseBench includes over 100 curated concepts, targeted evaluation prompts, and a robust set of metrics to assess both effectiveness and side effects of erasure. Our findings reveal a phenomenon of concept entanglement, where erasure leads to unintended suppression of non-target concepts, causing spillover degradation that manifests as distortions and a decline in generation quality.