mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Adversarial Attacks and Defenses on Text-to-Image Diffusion Models: A Survey

arXiv 2407.15861 ↗First posted 10 Jul 2024cs.CR cs.AI cs.CVcited by 34

On the map: Diffusion models → Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects

Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, the text-to-image diffusion model has gained considerable attention from the community due to its exceptional image generation capability. A representative model, Stable Diffusion, amassed more than 10 million users within just two months of its release. This surge in popularity has facilitated studies on the robustness and safety of the model, leading to the proposal of various adversarial attack methods. Simultaneously, there has been a marked increase in research focused on defense methods to improve the robustness and safety of these models. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of the literature on adversarial attacks and defenses targeting text-to-image diffusion models. We begin with an overview of text-to-image diffusion models, followed by an introduction to a taxonomy of adversarial attacks and an in-depth review of existing attack methods. We then present a detailed analysis of current defense methods that improve model robustness and safety. Finally, we discuss ongoing challenges and explore promising future research directions. For a complete list of the adversarial attack and defense methods covered in this survey, please refer to our curated repository at https://github.com/datar001/Awesome-AD-on-T2IDM.

Key facts. Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 91 of its 121 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Jul 2024.

Builds on

91 of 121 references.

Closest ancestors · 24

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024ConceptPrune: Concept Editing in Diffusion Models via Skilled Neuron Pruning29 May
  2. 2024R.A.C.E.: Robust Adversarial Concept Erasure for Secure Text-to-Image Diffusion Model25 May
  3. 2024Unlearning Concepts in Diffusion Model via Concept Domain Correction and Concept Preserving Gradient24 May
  4. 2024Defensive Unlearning with Adversarial Training for Robust Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models24 May
  5. 2024Jailbreaking Prompt Attack: A Controllable Adversarial Attack against Diffusion Models2 Apr
  6. 2024Revealing Vulnerabilities in Stable Diffusion via Targeted Attacks16 Jan
  7. 2023All but One: Surgical Concept Erasing with Model Preservation in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models20 Dec
  8. 2023Receler: Reliable Concept Erasing of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Lightweight Erasers29 Nov
  9. 2023MMA-Diffusion: MultiModal Attack on Diffusion Models29 Nov
  10. 2023To Generate or Not? Safety-Driven Unlearned Diffusion Models Are Still Easy To Generate Unsafe Images ... For Now18 Oct
  11. 2023Ring-A-Bell! How Reliable are Concept Removal Methods for Diffusion Models?16 Oct
  12. 2023Prompting4Debugging: Red-Teaming Text-to-Image Diffusion Models by Finding Problematic Prompts12 Sep
12 more
  1. 2023Unified Concept Editing in Diffusion Models25 Aug
  2. 2023Degeneration-Tuning: Using Scrambled Grid shield Unwanted Concepts from Stable Diffusion2 Aug
  3. 2023Towards Safe Self-Distillation of Internet-Scale Text-to-Image Diffusion Models12 Jul
  4. 2023Evaluating the Robustness of Text-to-image Diffusion Models against Real-world Attacks16 Jun
  5. 2023Stable Diffusion is Unstable5 Jun
  6. 2023Unsafe Diffusion: On the Generation of Unsafe Images and Hateful Memes From Text-To-Image Models23 May
  7. 2023Forget-Me-Not: Learning to Forget in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models30 Mar
  8. 2023A Pilot Study of Query-Free Adversarial Attack against Stable Diffusion29 Mar
  9. 2023Ablating Concepts in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models23 Mar
  10. 2023Erasing Concepts from Diffusion Models13 Mar
  11. 2022Safe Latent Diffusion: Mitigating Inappropriate Degeneration in Diffusion Models9 Nov
  12. 2022Red-Teaming the Stable Diffusion Safety Filter3 Oct

Other references · 67

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  4. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,498
  5. 2017Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attackscited by 6,326
  6. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,322
  7. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  8. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
  9. 2015Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Visioncited by 5,451
  10. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  11. 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,276
  12. 2022LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text modelscited by 4,131
38 more
  1. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 3,595
  2. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generationcited by 3,286
  3. 2016Improved Techniques for Training GANscited by 2,938
  4. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,591
  5. 2023MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Frameworkcited by 1,761
  6. 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,287
  7. 2022Reproducible scaling laws for contrastive language-image learningcited by 1,163
  8. 2022Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applicationscited by 1,107
  9. 2019Machine Unlearningcited by 1,020
  10. 2022Diffusion Models in Vision: A Surveycited by 1,008
  11. 2022eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoiserscited by 921
  12. 2023A Simple and Effective Pruning Approach for Large Language Modelscited by 776
  13. 2023Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 696
  14. 2021CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformerscited by 691
  15. 2019Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Net: Selective Forgetting in Deep Networkscited by 599
  16. 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 580
  17. 2023MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generationcited by 529
  18. 2018Threat of Adversarial Attacks on Deep Learning in Computer Vision: A Surveycited by 459
  19. 2023Simple diffusion: End-to-end diffusion for high resolution imagescited by 413
  20. 2022Training-Free Structured Diffusion Guidance for Compositional Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 386
  21. 2022DiffusionDB: A Large-scale Prompt Gallery Dataset for Text-to-Image Generative Modelscited by 376
  22. 2023Editing Large Language Models: Problems, Methods, and Opportunitiescited by 367
  23. 2019Scalable Global Optimization via Local Bayesian Optimizationcited by 359
  24. 2022CogView2: Faster and Better Text-to-Image Generation via Hierarchical Transformerscited by 305
  25. 2023Text-to-image Diffusion Models in Generative AI: A Surveycited by 264
  26. 2021N"UWA: Visual Synthesis Pre-training for Neural visUal World creAtioncited by 253
  27. 2023LLM-grounded Diffusion: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Large Language Modelscited by 242
  28. 2022A Survey on Generative Diffusion Modelcited by 238
  29. 2023Building Cooperative Embodied Agents Modularly with Large Language Modelscited by 231
  30. 2022SpaText: Spatio-Textual Representation for Controllable Image Generationcited by 217
  31. 2023Any-to-Any Generation via Composable Diffusioncited by 203
  32. 2023Survey of Vulnerabilities in Large Language Models Revealed by Adversarial Attackscited by 189
  33. 2023Selective Amnesia: A Continual Learning Approach to Forgetting in Deep Generative Modelscited by 175
  34. 2023Grounded Text-to-Image Synthesis with Attention Refocusingcited by 163
  35. 2023Editing Implicit Assumptions in Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 128
  36. 2021Advances in adversarial attacks and defenses in computer vision: A surveycited by 127
  37. 2013Stabilitycited by 119
  38. 2024Controllable Generation with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models: A Surveycited by 82

50 most cited of 67 All 67 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 5; 2025: 18; 2026: 11.

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  1. 2024Jailbreak Attacks and Defenses against Multimodal Generative Models: A Surveycited by 31
  2. 2025T2I-RiskyPrompt: A Benchmark for Safety Evaluation, Attack, and Defense on Text-to-Image Modelcited by 16
  3. 2025TRCE: Towards Reliable Malicious Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 14
  4. 2025Minimalist Concept Erasure in Generative Modelscited by 13
  5. 2024Unveiling Concept Attribution in Diffusion Modelscited by 11
  6. 2025A Comprehensive Survey on Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 9
  7. 2025BadVideo: Stealthy Backdoor Attack against Text-to-Video Generationcited by 9
  8. 2024AEIOU: A Unified Defense Framework against NSFW Prompts in Text-to-Image Modelscited by 7
  9. 2025OVERT: A Benchmark for Over-Refusal Evaluation on Text-to-Image Modelscited by 5
  10. 2025Wukong Framework for Not Safe For Work Detection in Text-to-Image systemscited by 3
  11. 2025Seeing It Before It Happens: In-Generation NSFW Detection for Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Modelscited by 3
  12. 2025Responsible Diffusion: A Comprehensive Survey on Safety, Ethics, and Trust in Diffusion Modelscited by 3
22 more
  1. 2026Conditioned Activation Transport for T2I Safety Steeringcited by 3
  2. 2024The Superalignment of Superhuman Intelligence with Large Language Modelscited by 2
  3. 2025REDEditing: Relationship-Driven Precise Backdoor Poisoning on Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 2
  4. 2025Robustness in Both Domains: CLIP Needs a Robust Text Encodercited by 2
  5. 2025An h-space Based Adversarial Attack for Protection Against Few-shot Personalizationcited by 2
  6. 2025Securing Educational LLMs: A Generalised Taxonomy of Attacks on LLMs and DREAD Risk Assessmentcited by 2
  7. 2025Sealing The Backdoor: Unlearning Adversarial Text Triggers In Diffusion Models Using Knowledge Distillationcited by 2
  8. 2026Localized Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via High-Level Representation Misdirectioncited by 2
  9. 2026JANUS: A Lightweight Framework for Jailbreaking Text-to-Image Models via Distribution Optimizationcited by 2
  10. 2025SAGE: Exploring the Boundaries of Unsafe Concept Domain with Semantic-Augment Erasingcited by 1
  11. 2025Personalized Safety Alignment for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1
  12. 2025Edit-Your-Interest: Efficient Video Editing via Feature Most-Similar Propagationcited by 1
  13. 2024Boosting Imperceptibility of Stable Diffusion-based Adversarial Examples Generation with Momentumcited by 0
  14. 2025Metaphor-based Jailbreak Attacks on Text-to-Image Modelscited by 0
  15. 2026Scaling Exposes the Trigger: Input-Level Backdoor Detection in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Cross-Attention Scalingcited by 0
  16. 2026Latent Space Probing for Adult Content Detection in Video Generative Modelscited by 0
  17. 2026DiffusionHijack: Supply-Chain PRNG Backdoor Attack on Diffusion Models and Quantum Random Number Defensecited by 0
  18. 2026RT-Lynx: Putting GEMM Sparsity in the Right Place for Diffusion Modelscited by 0
  19. 2026Unified Safe In-context Image Generation in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers via Restricting Unsafe Information Flowscited by 0
  20. 2026TEA: Text Encoder Alignment for Robust Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Modelscited by 0
  21. 2026A Survey on Adversarial Attacks and Defenses for Diffusion Models Across Multiple Modalitiescited by 0
  22. 2026Towards Automatic Evolution Tree Generation from Citation Graphscited by 0

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  4. 2024Pixel is a Barrier: Diffusion Models Are More Adversarially Robust Than We Think
  5. 2025Practical, Generalizable and Robust Backdoor Attacks on Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
  6. 2023Intriguing Properties of Diffusion Models: An Empirical Study of the Natural Attack Capability in Text-to-Image Generative Models
  7. 2024DiffusionGuard: A Robust Defense Against Malicious Diffusion-based Image Editing
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