A Survey on Safe Multi-Modal Learning System
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Abstract (arXiv)
In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, multimodal learning systems (MMLS) have gained traction for their ability to process and integrate information from diverse modality inputs. Their expanding use in vital sectors such as healthcare has made safety assurance a critical concern. However, the absence of systematic research into their safety is a significant barrier to progress in this field. To bridge the gap, we present the first taxonomy that systematically categorizes and assesses MMLS safety. This taxonomy is structured around four fundamental pillars that are critical to ensuring the safety of MMLS: robustness, alignment, monitoring, and controllability. Leveraging this taxonomy, we review existing methodologies, benchmarks, and the current state of research, while also pinpointing the principal limitations and gaps in knowledge. Finally, we discuss unique challenges in MMLS safety. In illuminating these challenges, we aim to pave the way for future research, proposing potential directions that could lead to significant advancements in the safety protocols of MMLS.
Key facts. Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 72 of its 112 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2024.
Builds on
72 of 112 references.
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- 2025A Survey on Mechanistic Interpretability for Multi-Modal Foundation Modelscited by 34
- 2025Large Vision-Language Model Alignment and Misalignment: A Survey Through the Lens of Explainabilitycited by 28
- 2025MathAgent: Leveraging a Mixture-of-Math-Agent Framework for Real-World Multimodal Mathematical Error Detectioncited by 24
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- 2025The Eye of Sherlock Holmes: Uncovering User Private Attribute Profiling via Vision-Language Model Agentic Framework25 May 2025
- 2025Multimodal Cultural Safety: Evaluation Framework and Alignment Strategies20 May 2025
- 2025Towards deployment-centric multimodal AI beyond vision and language4 Apr 2025
- 2025MathAgent: Leveraging a Mixture-of-Math-Agent Framework for Real-World Multimodal Mathematical Error Detection23 Mar 2025
- 2025A Survey on Mechanistic Interpretability for Multi-Modal Foundation Models22 Feb 2025
- 2025Large Vision-Language Model Alignment and Misalignment: A Survey Through the Lens of Explainability2 Jan 2025
- 2025A Survey on Mechanistic Interpretability for Multi-Modal Foundation Modelscited by 34
- 2025Large Vision-Language Model Alignment and Misalignment: A Survey Through the Lens of Explainabilitycited by 28
- 2024Surveying the MLLM Landscape: A Meta-Review of Current Surveyscited by 20
- 2024The Synergy between Data and Multi-Modal Large Language Models: A Survey from Co-Development Perspectivecited by 15
- 2025Multimodal Cultural Safety: Evaluation Framework and Alignment Strategiescited by 8
- 2026Lingua-SafetyBench: A Benchmark for Safety Evaluation of Multilingual Vision-Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026MAPLE: Modality-Aware Post-training and Learning Ecosystemcited by 0
- 2026MAPLE: Modality-Aware Post-training and Learning Ecosystem12 Feb 2026
- 2026Lingua-SafetyBench: A Benchmark for Safety Evaluation of Multilingual Vision-Language Models30 Jan 2026
- 2025Multimodal Cultural Safety: Evaluation Framework and Alignment Strategies20 May 2025
- 2025A Survey on Mechanistic Interpretability for Multi-Modal Foundation Models22 Feb 2025
- 2025Large Vision-Language Model Alignment and Misalignment: A Survey Through the Lens of Explainability2 Jan 2025
- 2024Surveying the MLLM Landscape: A Meta-Review of Current Surveys17 Sep 2024
- 2024The Synergy between Data and Multi-Modal Large Language Models: A Survey from Co-Development Perspective11 Jul 2024
- 2025The Eye of Sherlock Holmes: Uncovering User Private Attribute Profiling via Vision-Language Model Agentic Frameworkcited by 9
- 2025Synergistic Prompting for Robust Visual Recognition with Missing Modalitiescited by 8
- 2025Improving Generalizability and Undetectability for Targeted Adversarial Attacks on Multimodal Pre-trained Modelscited by 5
- 2025Towards deployment-centric multimodal AI beyond vision and languagecited by 3
- 2024How Private are Language Models in Abstractive Summarization?cited by 2
- 2026An Empirical Analysis of Calibration and Selective Prediction in Multimodal Clinical Condition Classificationcited by 2
- 2025Lyapunov-Stable Adaptive Control for Multimodal Concept Driftcited by 0
- 2026An Empirical Analysis of Calibration and Selective Prediction in Multimodal Clinical Condition Classification3 Mar 2026
- 2025Lyapunov-Stable Adaptive Control for Multimodal Concept Drift9 Oct 2025
- 2025Improving Generalizability and Undetectability for Targeted Adversarial Attacks on Multimodal Pre-trained Models24 Sep 2025
- 2025Synergistic Prompting for Robust Visual Recognition with Missing Modalities10 Jul 2025
- 2025The Eye of Sherlock Holmes: Uncovering User Private Attribute Profiling via Vision-Language Model Agentic Framework25 May 2025
- 2025Towards deployment-centric multimodal AI beyond vision and language4 Apr 2025
- 2024How Private are Language Models in Abstractive Summarization?16 Dec 2024