Closed-Form Concept Erasure via Double Projections
On the map: Diffusion models → Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects
Abstract (arXiv)
While modern generative models such as diffusion-based architectures have enabled impressive creative capabilities, they also raise important safety and ethical risks. These concerns have led to growing interest in concept erasure, the process of removing unwanted concepts from model representations. Existing approaches often achieve strong erasure performance but rely on iterative optimization and may inadvertently distort unrelated concepts. In this work, we present a simple yet principled alternative: a linear transformation framework that achieves concept erasure analytically, without any training. Our method adapts a pretrained model through two sequential, closed-form steps: first, computing a proxy projection of the target concept, and second, applying a constrained transformation within the left null space of known concept directions. This design yields a deterministic and geometrically interpretable procedure for safe, efficient, and theory-grounded concept removal. Across a wide range of experiments, including object and style erasure on multiple Stable Diffusion variants and the flow-matching model (FLUX), our approach matches or surpasses the performance of state-of-the-art methods while preserving non-target concepts more faithfully. Requiring only a few seconds to apply, it offers a lightweight and drop-in tool for controlled model editing, advancing the goal of safer and more responsible generative models.
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 57 of its 72 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2026.
Builds on
57 of 72 references.
Closest ancestors · 25
Same direction, newest first
- 2025A Single Neuron Works: Precise Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models25 Sep
- 2025TRACE: Trajectory-Constrained Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models29 May
- 2025T2VUnlearning: A Concept Erasing Method for Text-to-Video Diffusion Models23 May
- 2025Erased or Dormant? Rethinking Concept Erasure Through Reversibility22 May
- 2025Localized Concept Erasure for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models Using Training-Free Gated Low-Rank Adaptation16 Mar
- 2025Fantastic Targets for Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models and Where To Find Them31 Jan
- 2025SAeUron: Interpretable Concept Unlearning in Diffusion Models with Sparse Autoencoders29 Jan
- 2024EraseAnything: Enabling Concept Erasure in Rectified Flow Transformers29 Dec
- 2024ConceptPrune: Concept Editing in Diffusion Models via Skilled Neuron Pruning29 May
- 2024Pruning for Robust Concept Erasing in Diffusion Models26 May
- 2024Defensive Unlearning with Adversarial Training for Robust Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models24 May
- 2024MACE: Mass Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models10 Mar
13 more
- 2024Separable Multi-Concept Erasure from Diffusion Models3 Feb
- 2023Receler: Reliable Concept Erasing of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Lightweight Erasers29 Nov
- 2023To Generate or Not? Safety-Driven Unlearned Diffusion Models Are Still Easy To Generate Unsafe Images ... For Now18 Oct
- 2023Prompting4Debugging: Red-Teaming Text-to-Image Diffusion Models by Finding Problematic Prompts12 Sep
- 2023Unified Concept Editing in Diffusion Models25 Aug
- 2023Towards Safe Self-Distillation of Internet-Scale Text-to-Image Diffusion Models12 Jul
- 2023Forget-Me-Not: Learning to Forget in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models30 Mar
- 2023Ablating Concepts in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models23 Mar
- 2023Erasing Concepts from Diffusion Models13 Mar
- 2023Raising the Cost of Malicious AI-Powered Image Editing13 Feb
- 2023Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models30 Jan
- 2022Safe Latent Diffusion: Mitigating Inappropriate Degeneration in Diffusion Models9 Nov
- 2022Red-Teaming the Stable Diffusion Safety Filter3 Oct
Other references · 32
- 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
- 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
- 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
- 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,539
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
- 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generationcited by 3,286
20 more
- 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
- 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
- 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,287
- 2022Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusioncited by 1,099
- 2022Building Normalizing Flows with Stochastic Interpolantscited by 964
- 2025FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Spacecited by 960
- 2022Quantifying Memorization Across Neural Language Modelscited by 755
- 2022Diffusion Art or Digital Forgery? Investigating Data Replication in Diffusion Modelscited by 418
- 2023InstantBooth: Personalized Text-to-Image Generation without Test-Time Finetuningcited by 343
- 2022Easily Accessible Text-to-Image Generation Amplifies Demographic Stereotypes at Large Scalecited by 262
- 2022DALL-Eval: Probing the Reasoning Skills and Social Biases of Text-to-Image Generation Modelscited by 230
- 2023Glaze: Protecting Artists from Style Mimicry by Text-to-Image Modelscited by 200
- 2023Selective Amnesia: A Continual Learning Approach to Forgetting in Deep Generative Modelscited by 175
- 2025LoRAShop: Training-Free Multi-Concept Image Generation and Editing with Rectified Flow Transformerscited by 12
- 2024RectifID: Personalizing Rectified Flow with Anchored Classifier Guidancecited by 11
- 2025DuMo: Dual Encoder Modulation Network for Precise Concept Erasurecited by 11
- 2025Erasing Concepts, Steering Generations: A Comprehensive Survey of Concept Suppressioncited by 10
- 2026Machine Unlearning under Retain-Forget Entanglementcited by 10
- 2024Unified Diffusion-Based Rigid and Non-Rigid Editing with Text and Image Guidancecited by 7
- 2025VCE: Safe Autoregressive Image Generation via Visual Contrast Exploitationcited by 2
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.
3 papers.
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- 2026Prototype-Guided Concept Erasure in Diffusion Models
- 2024Precise, Fast, and Low-cost Concept Erasure in Value Space: Orthogonal Complement Matters
- 2023All but One: Surgical Concept Erasing with Model Preservation in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
- 2023One-Dimensional Adapter to Rule Them All: Concepts, Diffusion Models and Erasing Applications
- 2026EraseAnything++: Enabling Concept Erasure in Rectified Flow Transformers Leveraging Multi-Object Optimization