MAGIC: A Co-Evolving Attacker-Defender Adversarial Game for Robust LLM Safety
On the map: LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation → Safety alignment and jailbreak attacks
also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)
Ensuring robust safety alignment is crucial for Large Language Models (LLMs), yet existing defenses often lag behind evolving adversarial attacks due to their reliance on static, pre-collected data distributions. In this paper, we introduce MAGIC, a novel multi-turn multi-agent reinforcement learning framework that formulates LLM safety alignment as an adversarial asymmetric game. Specifically, an attacker agent learns to iteratively rewrite original queries into deceptive prompts, while a defender agent simultaneously optimizes its policy to recognize and refuse such inputs. This dynamic process triggers a co-evolution, where the attacker's ever-changing strategies continuously uncover long-tail vulnerabilities, driving the defender to generalize to unseen attack patterns. Remarkably, we observe that the attacker, endowed with initial reasoning ability, evolves novel, previously unseen combinatorial strategies through iterative RL training, underscoring our method's substantial potential. Theoretically, we provide insights into a more robust game equilibrium and derive safety guarantees. Extensive experiments validate our framework's effectiveness, demonstrating superior defense success rates without compromising the helpfulness of the model. Our code is available at https://github.com/BattleWen/MAGIC.
Key facts. Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Safety alignment and jailbreak attacks, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation. Builds on 61 of its 74 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.
Builds on
61 of 74 references.
Closest ancestors · 12
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Safety Alignment of LMs via Non-cooperative Games23 Dec
- 2025Adversarial Attack-Defense Co-Evolution for LLM Safety Alignment via Tree-Group Dual-Aware Search and Optimization24 Nov
- 2025Chasing Moving Targets with Online Self-Play Reinforcement Learning for Safer Language Models9 Jun
- 2025Lifelong Safety Alignment for Language Models26 May
- 2025MTSA: Multi-turn Safety Alignment for LLMs through Multi-round Red-teaming22 May
- 2024SORRY-Bench: Systematically Evaluating Large Language Model Safety Refusal20 Jun
- 2024OR-Bench: An Over-Refusal Benchmark for Large Language Models31 May
- 2023Safe RLHF: Safe Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback19 Oct
- 2023Jailbreak and Guard Aligned Language Models with Only Few In-Context Demonstrations10 Oct
- 2023GPT-4 Is Too Smart To Be Safe: Stealthy Chat with LLMs via Cipher12 Aug
- 2023Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Models27 Jul
- 2022Red Teaming Language Models to Reduce Harms: Methods, Scaling Behaviors, and Lessons Learned23 Aug
Other references · 49
- 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
- 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
- 2020Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understandingcited by 7,768
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
- 2018Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challengecited by 4,710
- 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
- 2022Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedbackcited by 2,950
- 2023GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmarkcited by 2,748
- 2023Jailbroken: How Does LLM Safety Training Fail?cited by 1,565
- 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,339
- 2024HarmBench: A Standardized Evaluation Framework for Automated Red Teaming and Robust Refusalcited by 1,330
- 2023Jailbreaking Black Box Large Language Models in Twenty Queriescited by 1,326
37 more
- 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,143
- 2024Length-Controlled AlpacaEval: A Simple Way to Debias Automatic Evaluatorscited by 865
- 2022Ignore Previous Prompt: Attack Techniques For Language Modelscited by 760
- 2023Tree of Attacks: Jailbreaking Black-Box LLMs Automaticallycited by 619
- 2023XSTest: A Test Suite for Identifying Exaggerated Safety Behaviours in Large Language Modelscited by 477
- 2024InjecAgent: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injections in Tool-Integrated Large Language Model Agentscited by 476
- 2024WildGuard: Open One-Stop Moderation Tools for Safety Risks, Jailbreaks, and Refusals of LLMscited by 460
- 2023"Do Anything Now": Characterizing and Evaluating In-The-Wild Jailbreak Prompts on Large Language Modelscited by 457
- 2023SmoothLLM: Defending Large Language Models Against Jailbreaking Attackscited by 434
- 2024A StrongREJECT for Empty Jailbreakscited by 352
- 2023Low-Resource Languages Jailbreak GPT-4cited by 290
- 2023A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Generalized Nested Jailbreak Prompts can Fool Large Language Models Easilycited by 242
- 2023LLM Self Defense: By Self Examination, LLMs Know They Are Being Trickedcited by 226
- 2024WildTeaming at Scale: From In-the-Wild Jailbreaks to (Adversarially) Safer Language Modelscited by 206
- 2023Scalable and Transferable Black-Box Jailbreaks for Language Models via Persona Modulationcited by 202
- 2024ArtPrompt: ASCII Art-based Jailbreak Attacks against Aligned LLMscited by 197
- 2024Rainbow Teaming: Open-Ended Generation of Diverse Adversarial Promptscited by 189
- 2024AutoDAN-Turbo: A Lifelong Agent for Strategy Self-Exploration to Jailbreak LLMscited by 185
- 2023MART: Improving LLM Safety with Multi-round Automatic Red-Teamingcited by 161
- 2024Robust Prompt Optimization for Defending Language Models Against Jailbreaking Attackscited by 150
- 2024Automatic and Universal Prompt Injection Attacks against Large Language Modelscited by 112
- 2025X-Teaming: Multi-Turn Jailbreaks and Defenses with Adaptive Multi-Agentscited by 112
- 2024OLMES: A Standard for Language Model Evaluationscited by 100
- 2024Improved Techniques for Optimization-Based Jailbreaking on Large Language Modelscited by 98
- 2024LLMs know their vulnerabilities: Uncover Safety Gaps through Natural Distribution Shiftscited by 80
- 2025ReMA: Learning to Meta-think for LLMs with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 78
- 2024FlipAttack: Jailbreak LLMs via Flippingcited by 73
- 2024Fight Back Against Jailbreaking via Prompt Adversarial Tuningcited by 63
- 2025Safety at Scale: A Comprehensive Survey of Large Model and Agent Safetycited by 63
- 2025Reasoning-Augmented Conversation for Multi-Turn Jailbreak Attacks on Large Language Modelscited by 61
- 2024Boosting Jailbreak Attack with Momentumcited by 38
- 2024Accelerating Greedy Coordinate Gradient and General Prompt Optimization via Probe Samplingcited by 33
- 2026OpenRT: An Open-Source Red Teaming Framework for Multimodal LLMscited by 18
- 2025Adversarial Reinforcement Learning for Large Language Model Agent Safetycited by 14
- 2024Toward Optimal LLM Alignments Using Two-Player Gamescited by 13
- 2025Geneshift: Impact of different scenario shift on Jailbreaking LLMcited by 4
- 2025AdvEvo-MARL: Shaping Internalized Safety through Adversarial Co-Evolution in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 15.
15 papers.
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- 2026Reinforcement Learning for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems through Orchestration Tracescited by 4
- 2026Internalizing Safety Understanding in Large Reasoning Models via Verificationcited by 3
- 2026Runtime Skill Audit: Targeted Runtime Probing for Agent Skill Securitycited by 2
- 2026Not All Turns Matter: Credit Assignment for Multi-Turn Jailbreakingcited by 1
- 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Designcited by 1
- 2026SPARED: Reasoning-Based AI-Generated Image Detection via Adversarially Edited Datacited by 1
- 2026Safin-1: Safety from Within through Memory-Native State Evolutioncited by 1
- 2026CoER: Defending against Adaptive Indirect Prompt Injection via Adversarial Co-Evolution and Refinementcited by 1
- 2026Disentangling Intent from Role: Adversarial Self-Play for Persona-Invariant Safety Alignmentcited by 0
- 2026The Attacker in the Mirror: Breaking Self-Consistency in Safety via Anchored Bipolicy Self-Playcited by 0
- 2026Model-Agnostic Lifelong LLM Safety via Externalized Attack-Defense Co-Evolutioncited by 0
- 2026Addressing Over-Refusal in LLMs with Competing Rewardscited by 0
- 2026ReSI: Recursive Safety Improvement toward Resistant and Resilient AI8 Oct 2026
- 2026CoDeL: Co-Evolutionary Defense against Indirect Prompt Injection in LLM-based Agents28 Sep 2026
- 2026CoER: Defending against Adaptive Indirect Prompt Injection via Adversarial Co-Evolution and Refinement7 Sep 2026
- 2026Safin-1: Safety from Within through Memory-Native State Evolution31 Aug 2026
- 2026SPARED: Reasoning-Based AI-Generated Image Detection via Adversarially Edited Data13 Aug 2026
- 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Design10 Aug 2026
- 2026Gradient Immunity: Null-Space Resistance to Malicious Fine-Tuning5 Aug 2026
- 2026Addressing Over-Refusal in LLMs with Competing Rewards30 Jun 2026
- 2026Runtime Skill Audit: Targeted Runtime Probing for Agent Skill Security10 Jun 2026
- 2026Model-Agnostic Lifelong LLM Safety via Externalized Attack-Defense Co-Evolution13 May 2026
- 2026Internalizing Safety Understanding in Large Reasoning Models via Verification9 May 2026
- 2026Not All Turns Matter: Credit Assignment for Multi-Turn Jailbreaking9 May 2026
3 more
- 2026The Attacker in the Mirror: Breaking Self-Consistency in Safety via Anchored Bipolicy Self-Play8 May 2026
- 2026Reinforcement Learning for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems through Orchestration Traces4 May 2026
- 2026Disentangling Intent from Role: Adversarial Self-Play for Persona-Invariant Safety Alignment3 May 2026
- 2026Reinforcement Learning for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems through Orchestration Tracescited by 4
- 2026Runtime Skill Audit: Targeted Runtime Probing for Agent Skill Securitycited by 2
- 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Designcited by 1
- 2026CoER: Defending against Adaptive Indirect Prompt Injection via Adversarial Co-Evolution and Refinementcited by 1
- 2026CoDeL: Co-Evolutionary Defense against Indirect Prompt Injection in LLM-based Agentscited by 0
- 2026CoDeL: Co-Evolutionary Defense against Indirect Prompt Injection in LLM-based Agents28 Sep 2026
- 2026CoER: Defending against Adaptive Indirect Prompt Injection via Adversarial Co-Evolution and Refinement7 Sep 2026
- 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Design10 Aug 2026
- 2026Runtime Skill Audit: Targeted Runtime Probing for Agent Skill Security10 Jun 2026
- 2026Reinforcement Learning for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems through Orchestration Traces4 May 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026Be Your Own Red Teamer: Safety Alignment via Self-Play and Reflective Experience Replay
- 2026CoopGuard: Stateful Cooperative Agents Safeguarding LLMs Against Evolving Multi-Round Attacks
- 2026TriPlay-RL: Tri-Role Self-Play Reinforcement Learning for LLM Safety Alignment
- 2023Survey of Vulnerabilities in Large Language Models Revealed by Adversarial Attacks
- 2026CHASE: Adversarial Red-Blue Teaming for Improving LLM Safety using Reinforcement Learning
- 2026Yuvion LLM: An Adversarially-Aware Large Language Model for Content And AI Safety
- 2025Agent Safety Alignment via Reinforcement Learning
- 2026SafeHarbor: Defining Precise Decision Boundaries via Hierarchical Memory-Augmented Guardrail for LLM Agent Safety