Reference-Guided Machine Unlearning (ReGUn) is a vision unlearning framework that prioritizes distributional indistinguishability over degradation-based heuristics. It uses disjoint held-out data to create a class-conditioned reference distribution for distillation, guiding forget samples toward non-member behavior without explicitly degrading predictions. Experiments across various architectures and datasets show that ReGUn achieves a competitive forgetting–utility trade-off and closely matches retrain-like membership inference behavior.
By Jonas Mirlach, Sonia Laguna, Julia E. Vogt
The paper introduces a concept-guided poisoning unlearning framework that explicitly identifies semantic concepts most strongly linked to a target class or knowledge. For image classification, it uses a Post-hoc Concept Bottleneck Model to locate relevant image regions and creates poisoned samples; for large language models, it aggregates Integrated Gradients over multiple question responses to mask important content and generate poisoned training targets. Experiments across several datasets demonstrate effective unlearning while largely preserving model utility.
By Wenhan Chang, Tianqing Zhu, Heng Xu, Wenjian Liu, Wanlei Zhou
The paper investigates how machine unlearning for large language models (LLMs) can unintentionally erase related knowledge, even in distant domains. By analyzing the propagation of unlearning effects before any model updates, the authors discover a consistent decay pattern where collateral damage is strongest near the targeted forget set and diminishes with semantic distance but never fully disappears at domain boundaries. They propose a pre-unlearning prediction task—forget-set auditing—to identify potential collateral damage early, finding that interaction features between the forget set and evaluation set are the most predictive signals. This approach offers an early warning system for risky unlearning runs and guides the design of more reliable unlearning procedures.
By Bo Su, Ankit Shah, Thai Le
CALIBURN is a new approach to large language model (LLM) unlearning that measures a model’s confidence in undesirable knowledge and uses this measure to fine‑tune unlearning gradient updates. By doing so, it offers more precise control over what is forgotten while better preserving the model’s overall utility. Experiments on benchmarks such as MUSE and WMDP show that CALIBURN outperforms existing methods in balancing knowledge removal with utility retention.
By Zhengbang Yang, Yisheng Zhong, Junyuan Hong, Zhuangdi Zhu
arXiv:2606. 07141v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Language models trained for clinical disease inference are trained on patient data, which may include sensitive and private information, and data owners may request the removal of their data from a trained model due to privacy or copyright concerns.
By Anurag Sharma, Sai Teja Chunchu, Prasenjit Mitra, Sandipan Sikdar, Koustav Rudra
The paper introduces MUNKEY, a memory‑augmented transformer that enables machine unlearning by design. By decoupling instance‑specific memorization from model weights, unlearning is achieved simply by deleting an instance‑identifying key, allowing zero‑shot forgetting without retraining or accessing original data. Experiments on natural image, fine‑grained visual recognition, and medical datasets show that MUNKEY outperforms existing post‑hoc unlearning methods while maintaining predictive performance.
By Sonia Laguna, Jorge da Silva Goncalves, Moritz Vandenhirtz, Alain Ryser, Irene Cannistraci, Julia E. Vogt
arXiv:2605. 27569v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Machine unlearning aims to remove the influence of specific training records from a deployed model without retraining from scratch.
By Georgina Cosma, Axel Finke
The paper introduces Kernel-Anticipated Unlearning (KAU), a method for approximate unlearning of knowledge-graph embeddings that accounts for relearning during continued training. KAU uses the tangent kernel to model how forgotten facts’ scores change, expressing this response in closed form and guiding edits to minimize future leakage. Experiments show KAU reduces leakage by 46‑63% on FB15k-237 and 50‑82% on CoDEx-L compared to the strongest existing unlearner, while preserving higher utility.
By Parnian Fazel, Mohammad M Maheri, Hamed Haddadi
arXiv:2608.28361v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Machine Unlearning methods for Large Language Models typically assume pre-specified forget and retain sets. In realistic settings, however, requests...
By Praveen Bushipaka, Andrea D'Angelo, Lucia Passaro, Tommaso Cucinotta
The paper introduces Dynamic DAE Guardrails (DSG), a method that uses Dynamic Sparse Autoencoders to perform precision unlearning in large language models. DSG leverages principled feature selection and a dynamic classifier to target activation-based unlearning, outperforming existing gradient‑based methods in terms of computational efficiency, stability, sequential unlearning, resistance to relearning attacks, data efficiency, and interpretability.
By Aashiq Muhamed, Jacopo Bonato, Mona Diab, Virginia Smith
arXiv:2608.01008v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can memorize and disclose sensitive information, motivating machine unlearning to remove designated knowle...
By Junkai Lin, Junkai Chen, Siqi Hou, Yuhao He, Ruiqi Liu, Chenhan Jin, Shengze Xu, Tieyong Zeng, Xiangyuan Lan
arXiv:2512. 02657v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Real-world deployment of text-to-image diffusion models requires continual concept removal as new privacy, copyright, or safety obligations arise over time.
By Naveen George, Naoki Murata, Yuhta Takida, Konda Reddy Mopuri, Yuki Mitsufuji