← Back to Library

Guardians and Offenders: A Survey on Harmful Content Generation and Safety Mitigation

Authors: Chi Zhang, Changjia Zhu, Junjie Xiong, Xiaoran Xu, Lingyao Li, Yao Liu, Zhuo Lu

Published: 2025-08-07

arXiv ID: 2508.05775v1

Added to Library: 2025-08-14 23:09 UTC

Red Teaming

πŸ“„ Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized content creation across digital platforms, offering unprecedented capabilities in natural language generation and understanding. These models enable beneficial applications such as content generation, question and answering (Q&A), programming, and code reasoning. Meanwhile, they also pose serious risks by inadvertently or intentionally producing toxic, offensive, or biased content. This dual role of LLMs, both as powerful tools for solving real-world problems and as potential sources of harmful language, presents a pressing sociotechnical challenge. In this survey, we systematically review recent studies spanning unintentional toxicity, adversarial jailbreaking attacks, and content moderation techniques. We propose a unified taxonomy of LLM-related harms and defenses, analyze emerging multimodal and LLM-assisted jailbreak strategies, and assess mitigation efforts, including reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF), prompt engineering, and safety alignment. Our synthesis highlights the evolving landscape of LLM safety, identifies limitations in current evaluation methodologies, and outlines future research directions to guide the development of robust and ethically aligned language technologies.

πŸ” Key Points

  • The paper provides a comprehensive taxonomy of harms associated with Large Language Models (LLMs) and corresponding mitigation strategies, addressing both unintentional toxicity and intentional exploitation, such as jailbreaking.
  • It presents a detailed analysis of the dual nature of LLMsβ€”acting as tools for both harmful content generation and as potential defenders in combating such content through techniques like content moderation and counter-speech generation.
  • The authors emphasize the challenges posed by LLMs, including the unintended generation of toxic content due to inherent biases in model training and advanced adversarial attack strategies that bypass safety mechanisms.
  • The survey synthesizes findings from 372 relevant studies, illustrating the landscape of current research on LLM safeguards and identifying significant gaps in existing evaluation methodologies.
  • Future research directions are outlined, providing guidance for developing more robust, ethically aligned language technologies that can better handle harmful content.

πŸ’‘ Why This Paper Matters

This paper is highly relevant to the ongoing discourse on LLM safety and ethical AI deployment, especially given the increasing use of LLMs in various applications where harmful content generation poses substantial risks. It not only highlights the capabilities and risks associated with LLMs but also offers a roadmap for future research and development in mitigating these risks.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

AI security researchers will find this paper particularly valuable as it addresses critical challenges regarding the safety and ethical considerations of LLMs. The paper's systematic review of harmful content generation and its exploration of defense mechanisms provide a rich resource for researchers focused on improving the reliability and safety of AI systems in real-world applications, making it a significant contribution to the field.

πŸ“š Read the Full Paper