# Holistic Unlearning Benchmark: A Multi-Faceted Evaluation for Text-to-Image Diffusion Model Unlearning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.05664 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05664/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 50 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/robustness-privacy-and-adversarial-aspects/)
- LLM safety and security / [Vision-language and text-to-image safety](https://mlsanity.com/safety/vision-language-and-text-to-image-safety/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [Continual Learning with Deep Generative Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08690/) (2017)
- [ImageReward: Learning and Evaluating Human Preferences for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05977/) (2023)
- [Pick-a-Pic: An Open Dataset of User Preferences for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01569/) (2023)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [Compositional Visual Generation with Composable Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01714/) (2022)
- [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Net: Selective Forgetting in Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04933/) (2019)
- [Holistically-Nested Edge Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06375/) (2015)
- [Erasing Concepts from Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07345/) (2023)
- [Safe Latent Diffusion: Mitigating Inappropriate Degeneration in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05105/) (2022)
- [UniPC: A Unified Predictor-Corrector Framework for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04867/) (2023)
- [TIFA: Accurate and Interpretable Text-to-Image Faithfulness Evaluation with Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11897/) (2023)
- [Unified Concept Editing in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14761/) (2023)
- [SalUn: Empowering Machine Unlearning via Gradient-based Weight Saliency in Both Image Classification and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12508/) (2023)
- [Ablating Concepts in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13516/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [A Comprehensive Survey in LLM(-Agent) Full Stack Safety: Data, Training and Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15585/) (2025)
- [Erasing Concepts, Steering Generations: A Comprehensive Survey of Concept Suppression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19398/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Unlearning Across Vision, Language, Video, and Audio: Survey of Methods, Datasets, and Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.07907/) (2026)
- [Reference-Specific Unlearning Metrics Can Hide the Truth: A Reality Check](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12981/) (2025)
- [Generative Model Unlearning: A Survey through Target Events, Unlearning Operators, and Evaluation Protocols](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19894/) (2025)
- [EMMA: Concept Erasure Benchmark with Comprehensive Semantic Metrics and Diverse Categories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17320/) (2025)
- [Comprehensive Evaluation and Analysis for NSFW Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15450/) (2025)
- [Automating Evaluation of Diffusion Model Unlearning with (Vision-) Language Model World Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07137/) (2025)
- [Coffee: Controllable Diffusion Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14113/) (2025)
- [Critic-Guided Reinforcement Unlearning in Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03213/) (2026)
- [No Concept Escapes the Audit: Auditing-Aware Unlearning for Verifiable Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05401/) (2026)
- [Comprehensive Assessment and Analysis for NSFW Content Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12527/) (2025)
- [The Persistence of Cultural Memory: Investigating Multimodal Iconicity in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11435/) (2025)
- [Forgetting is Competition: Rethinking Unlearning as Representation Interference in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00975/) (2026)
- [EDGE-Shield: Efficient Denoising-staGE Shield for Violative Content Filtering via Scalable Reference-Based Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06063/) (2026)
- [Mosaic: Compositional Multi-Concept Erasure via Vector Field Blending](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25574/) (2026)
- [Concept Unlearning via Cross-Attention Activation Projection for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25765/) (2026)
- [CoreUnlearn: Rethinking Concept Unlearning through Disentangled Component-Level Erasure in Text-guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01658/) (2026)
- [I-CARE: Analysis of interference-related phenomena in a controllable, diverse and representative unlearning setting for text-to-image models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00003/) (2026)
- [AcFlow: Controlling Text-to-Image Diffusion Transformers via Learned Conditional Activation Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10723/) (2026)
- [eval-unlearn: Benchmarking unlearning in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35269/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As text-to-image diffusion models gain widespread commercial applications, there are increasing concerns about unethical or harmful use, including the unauthorized generation of copyrighted or sensitive content. Concept unlearning has emerged as a promising solution to these challenges by removing undesired and harmful information from the pre-trained model. However, the previous evaluations primarily focus on whether target concepts are removed while preserving image quality, neglecting the broader impacts such as unintended side effects. In this work, we propose Holistic Unlearning Benchmark (HUB), a comprehensive framework for evaluating unlearning methods across six key dimensions: faithfulness, alignment, pinpoint-ness, multilingual robustness, attack robustness, and efficiency. Our benchmark covers 33 target concepts, including 16,000 prompts per concept, spanning four categories: Celebrity, Style, Intellectual Property, and NSFW. Our investigation reveals that no single method excels across all evaluation criteria. By releasing our evaluation code and dataset, we hope to inspire further research in this area, leading to more reliable and effective unlearning methods.