# Negation Blindness in Large Language Models: Unveiling the NO Syndrome in Image Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.00105 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00105/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08914/) (2023)
- [Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Practice: A Survey on ChatGPT and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13712/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12320/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination Mitigation Techniques in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01313/) (2024)
- [Large Pre-trained Language Models Contain Human-like Biases of What is Right and Wrong to Do](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11790/) (2021)
- [The Ethics of ChatGPT in Medicine and Healthcare: A Systematic Review on Large Language Models (LLMs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14473/) (2024)
- [Sparks of Large Audio Models: A Survey and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12792/) (2023)
- [XAI meets LLMs: A Survey of the Relation between Explainable AI and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15248/) (2024)
- [Decoding ChatGPT: A Taxonomy of Existing Research, Current Challenges, and Possible Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14107/) (2023)
- [Refashioning Emotion Recognition Modelling: The Advent of Generalised Large Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11578/) (2023)
- [Self-training Large Language Models through Knowledge Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11275/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Gender Bias in Text-to-Video Generation Models: A case study of Sora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01987/) (2024)
- [Negation: A Pink Elephant in the Large Language Models' Room?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22395/) (2025)
- [Quantification and object perception in Multimodal Large Language Models and human linguistic cognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08126/) (2025)
- [NegT2IBench: When Negation Changes the Picture. A Polarity Benchmark for Text-to-Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03084/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Foundational Large Language Models (LLMs) have changed the way we perceive technology. They have been shown to excel in tasks ranging from poem writing and coding to essay generation and puzzle solving. With the incorporation of image generation capability, they have become more comprehensive and versatile AI tools. At the same time, researchers are striving to identify the limitations of these tools to improve them further. Currently identified flaws include hallucination, biases, and bypassing restricted commands to generate harmful content. In the present work, we have identified a fundamental limitation related to the image generation ability of LLMs, and termed it The NO Syndrome. This negation blindness refers to LLMs inability to correctly comprehend NO related natural language prompts to generate the desired images. Interestingly, all tested LLMs including GPT-4, Gemini, and Copilot were found to be suffering from this syndrome. To demonstrate the generalization of this limitation, we carried out simulation experiments and conducted entropy-based and benchmark statistical analysis tests on various LLMs in multiple languages, including English, Hindi, and French. We conclude that the NO syndrome is a significant flaw in current LLMs that needs to be addressed. A related finding of this study showed a consistent discrepancy between image and textual responses as a result of this NO syndrome. We posit that the introduction of a negation context-aware reinforcement learning based feedback loop between the LLMs textual response and generated image could help ensure the generated text is based on both the LLMs correct contextual understanding of the negation query and the generated visual output.