# SafeMo: Linguistically Grounded Unlearning for Trustworthy Text-to-Motion Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00590 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00590/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Vision-language and text-to-image safety, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security.
- Builds on 45 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jan 2026.

## Placed in

- 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 45)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [DistilBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lighter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01108/) (2019)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [Editing Models with Task Arithmetic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04089/) (2022)
- [Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14916/) (2022)
- [Machine Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03817/) (2019)
- [T2M-GPT: Generating Human Motion from Textual Descriptions with Discrete Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06052/) (2023)
- [Executing your Commands via Motion Diffusion in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04048/) (2022)
- [Erasing Concepts from Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07345/) (2023)
- [Is ChatGPT a General-Purpose Natural Language Processing Task Solver?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06476/) (2023)
- [MoMask: Generative Masked Modeling of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00063/) (2023)
- [Unified Concept Editing in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14761/) (2023)
- [PhysDiff: Physics-Guided Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02500/) (2022)
- [TM2T: Stochastic and Tokenized Modeling for the Reciprocal Generation of 3D Human Motions and Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01696/) (2022)
- [The KIT Motion-Language Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.03827/) (2016)
- [MACE: Mass Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06135/) (2024)
- [Large Language Model Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10683/) (2023)
- [Motion-X: A Large-scale 3D Expressive Whole-body Human Motion Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00818/) (2023)
- [Towards Safer Large Language Models through Machine Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10058/) (2024)
- [Reliable and Efficient Concept Erasure of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12383/) (2024)
- [Motion Mamba: Efficient and Long Sequence Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07487/) (2024)
- [CLoSD: Closing the Loop between Simulation and Diffusion for multi-task character control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03441/) (2024)
- [BAMM: Bidirectional Autoregressive Motion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19435/) (2024)
- [Motion-Agent: A Conversational Framework for Human Motion Generation with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17013/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [EasyTune: Efficient Step-Aware Fine-Tuning for Diffusion-Based Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07967/) (2026)
- [UniMesh: Unifying 3D Mesh Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17472/) (2026)
- [PartRAG: Retrieval-Augmented Part-Level 3D Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17033/) (2026)
- [MoRL: Reinforced Reasoning for Unified Motion Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14534/) (2026)
- [FOMO: Forget the Concept, Don't Miss Out on the Scene in Selective Video Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39605/) (2026)
- [CSF: Contextual Safety Filtering for Motion Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12467/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-motion (T2M) generation with diffusion backbones achieves strong realism and alignment. Safety concerns in T2M methods have been raised in recent years; existing methods replace discrete VQ-VAE codebook entries to steer the model away from unsafe behaviors. However, discrete codebook replacement-based methods have two critical flaws: firstly, replacing codebook entries which are reused by benign prompts leads to drifts on everyday tasks, degrading the model's benign performance; secondly, discrete token-based methods introduce quantization and smoothness loss, resulting in artifacts and jerky transitions. Moreover, existing text-to-motion datasets naturally contain unsafe intents and corresponding motions, making them unsuitable for safety-driven machine learning. To address these challenges, we propose SafeMo, a trustworthy motion generative framework integrating Minimal Motion Unlearning (MMU), a two-stage machine unlearning strategy, enabling safe human motion generation in continuous space, preserving continuous kinematics without codebook loss and delivering strong safety-utility trade-offs compared to current baselines. Additionally, we present the first safe text-to-motion dataset SafeMoVAE-29K integrating rewritten safe text prompts and continuous refined motion for trustworthy human motion unlearning. Built upon DiP, SafeMo efficiently generates safe human motions with natural transitions. Experiments demonstrate effective unlearning performance of SafeMo by showing strengthened forgetting on unsafe prompts, reaching 2.5x and 14.4x higher forget-set FID on HumanML3D and Motion-X respectively, compared to the previous SOTA human motion unlearning method LCR, with benign performance on safe prompts being better or comparable. Code: https://github.com/AIGeeksGroup/SafeMo. Website: https://aigeeksgroup.github.io/SafeMo.