Evolving Safety Landscape of Multi-modal Large Language Models: A Survey of Emerging Threats and Safeguards
arXiv:2608.07535v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) integrate heterogeneous modalities through modality alignment and fusion, enabling stronger understanding and reasoning. However, this architectural shift reshapes the safety landscape of machine learning. Increased model complexity and cross-modal interactions give rise to novel threats, including compromised modality integration, modality misalignment, and fused safety risks, reflecting shifts in threat modeling beyond uni-modal assumptions. These shifts, in turn, impose new constraints on safety solutions not captured by existing frameworks rooted in uni-modal learning. Motivated by these challenges, this survey provides a systematic analysis of the evolving safety landscape of MLLMs. We first propose a multimodal grounded taxonomy of safety threats and analyze shifts in threat models, covering adversarial attacks, data poisoning, jailbreaks, and hallucinations. We then summarize updated safety assumptions and organize recent advances in MLLM safety strategies accordingly. Finally, we discuss open challenges and future directions to inform the development of more principled and scalable safety mechanisms for multimodal systems.
-->
[Submitted on 27 Jul 2026]
Title:Evolving Safety Landscape of Multi-modal Large Language Models: A Survey of Emerging Threats and Safeguards
View a PDF of the paper titled Evolving Safety Landscape of Multi-modal Large Language Models: A Survey of Emerging Threats and Safeguards, by Xi Li and 8 other authors
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) integrate heterogeneous modalities through modality alignment and fusion, enabling stronger understanding and reasoning. However, this architectural shift reshapes the safety landscape of machine learning. Increased model complexity and cross-modal interactions give rise to novel threats, including compromised modality integration, modality misalignment, and fused safety risks, reflecting shifts in threat modeling beyond uni-modal assumptions. These shifts, in turn, impose new constraints on safety solutions not captured by existing frameworks rooted in uni-modal learning. Motivated by these challenges, this survey provides a systematic analysis of the evolving safety landscape of MLLMs. We first propose a multimodal grounded taxonomy of safety threats and analyze shifts in threat models, covering adversarial attacks, data poisoning, jailbreaks, and hallucinations. We then summarize updated safety assumptions and organize recent advances in MLLM safety strategies accordingly. Finally, we discuss open challenges and future directions to inform the development of more principled and scalable safety mechanisms for multimodal systems.
Comments: Accepted at the ICLR 2026 Workshop on Principled Design for Trustworthy AI
Subjects:
Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computers and Society (cs.CY)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.07535 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2608.07535v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.07535
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
Submission history
From: Xi Li [view email] [v1] Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:18:25 UTC (355 KB)
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
View a PDF of the paper titled Evolving Safety Landscape of Multi-modal Large Language Models: A Survey of Emerging Threats and Safeguards, by Xi Li and 8 other authors
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
TeX Source
view license
Current browse context:
cs.LG
new | recent | 2026-08
Change to browse by:
cs cs.AI cs.CY
References & Citations
NASA ADS
Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar
Loading...
Data provided by:
Bibliographic Tools
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)
Author
Venue
Institution
Topic
About arXivLabs
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)