# Towards integration of Privacy Enhancing Technologies in Explainable Artificial Intelligence

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04528 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04528/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 47 of its 99 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Deep Learning with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00133/) (2016)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05820/) (2016)
- [Understanding Black-box Predictions via Influence Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04730/) (2017)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10045/) (2019)
- [SmoothGrad: removing noise by adding noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03825/) (2017)
- [Modeling Tabular data using Conditional GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00503/) (2019)
- [Towards Robust Interpretability with Self-Explaining Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07538/) (2018)
- [Membership Inference Attacks on Machine Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07853/) (2021)
- [Enhanced Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09679/) (2021)
- [The Secret Revealer: Generative Model-Inversion Attacks Against Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07135/) (2019)
- [MemGuard: Defending against Black-Box Membership Inference Attacks via Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10594/) (2019)
- [Evaluating and Aggregating Feature-based Model Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00631/) (2020)
- [Quantus: An Explainable AI Toolkit for Responsible Evaluation of Neural Network Explanations and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06861/) (2022)
- [How to DP-fy ML: A Practical Guide to Machine Learning with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00654/) (2023)
- [XRAI: Better Attributions Through Regions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02825/) (2019)
- [Privacy Preserving Vertical Federated Learning for Tree-based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06170/) (2020)
- [Model Reconstruction from Model Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05185/) (2018)
- [Unbox the Black-box for the Medical Explainable AI via Multi-modal and Multi-centre Data Fusion: A Mini-Review, Two Showcases and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01998/) (2021)
- [AttriGuard: A Practical Defense Against Attribute Inference Attacks via Adversarial Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04810/) (2018)
- [Algorithms that Remember: Model Inversion Attacks and Data Protection Law](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04644/) (2018)
- [Framework for Evaluating Faithfulness of Local Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00734/) (2022)
- [Improving Robustness to Model Inversion Attacks via Mutual Information Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.05241/) (2020)
- [Exploiting Explanations for Model Inversion Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12669/) (2021)
- [Model extraction from counterfactual explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01884/) (2020)
- [MEGEX: Data-Free Model Extraction Attack against Gradient-Based Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08909/) (2021)
- [DualCF: Efficient Model Extraction Attack from Counterfactual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06504/) (2022)
- [On the Privacy Risks of Algorithmic Recourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05427/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Privacy-Preserving Explainable AIoT Application via SHAP Entropy Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.09775/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is a crucial pathway in mitigating the risk of non-transparency in the decision-making process of black-box Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. However, despite the benefits, XAI methods are found to leak the privacy of individuals whose data is used in training or querying the models. Researchers have demonstrated privacy attacks that exploit explanations to infer sensitive personal information of individuals. Currently there is a lack of defenses against known privacy attacks targeting explanations when vulnerable XAI are used in production and machine learning as a service system. To address this gap, in this article, we explore Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) as a defense mechanism against attribute inference on explanations provided by feature-based XAI methods. We empirically evaluate 3 types of PETs, namely synthetic training data, differentially private training and noise addition, on two categories of feature-based XAI. Our evaluation determines different responses from the mitigation methods and side-effects of PETs on other system properties such as utility and performance. In the best case, PETs integration in explanations reduced the risk of the attack by 49.47%, while maintaining model utility and explanation quality. Through our evaluation, we identify strategies for using PETs in XAI for maximizing benefits and minimizing the success of this privacy attack on sensitive personal information.