← Back to Library

OpenGuardrails: A Configurable, Unified, and Scalable Guardrails Platform for Large Language Models

Authors: Thomas Wang, Haowen Li

Published: 2025-10-22

arXiv ID: 2510.19169v2

Added to Library: 2025-11-14 23:08 UTC

Red Teaming

📄 Abstract

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into real-world applications, ensuring their safety, robustness, and privacy compliance has become critical. We present OpenGuardrails, the first fully open-source platform that unifies large-model-based safety detection, manipulation defense, and deployable guardrail infrastructure. OpenGuardrails protects against three major classes of risks: (1) content-safety violations such as harmful or explicit text generation, (2) model-manipulation attacks including prompt injection, jailbreaks, and code-interpreter abuse, and (3) data leakage involving sensitive or private information. Unlike prior modular or rule-based frameworks, OpenGuardrails introduces three core innovations: (1) a Configurable Policy Adaptation mechanism that allows per-request customization of unsafe categories and sensitivity thresholds; (2) a Unified LLM-based Guard Architecture that performs both content-safety and manipulation detection within a single model; and (3) a Quantized, Scalable Model Design that compresses a 14B dense base model to 3.3B via GPTQ while preserving over 98 of benchmark accuracy. The system supports 119 languages, achieves state-of-the-art performance across multilingual safety benchmarks, and can be deployed as a secure gateway or API-based service for enterprise use. All models, datasets, and deployment scripts are released under the Apache 2.0 license.

🔍 Key Points

  • OpenGuardrails introduces a Configurable Policy Adaptation mechanism that enables per-request customization of safety categories and sensitivity thresholds, offering flexibility critical for enterprise applications.
  • The platform features a Unified LLM-based Guard Architecture that integrates content-safety and manipulation detection into a single model, enhancing robustness and deployment efficiency.
  • OpenGuardrails employs a Scalable and Efficient Model Design, reducing a 14B model to 3.3B parameters while maintaining over 98% accuracy on benchmarks, facilitating low-latency deployment.
  • The system supports 119 languages, achieving state-of-the-art performance on multilingual safety benchmarks, making it suitable for global applications.
  • OpenGuardrails sets a new standard in safety infrastructure by being fully open-source, allowing for customization and extension in real-world use cases.

💡 Why This Paper Matters

The paper presents OpenGuardrails as a pioneering open-source platform that significantly enhances the safety and reliability of large language models in practical applications. Its innovations in customizable policy mechanisms and unified architecture position it as a critical tool for ensuring safe deployment of AI technologies across diverse applications.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

This paper is highly relevant to AI security researchers as it addresses critical issues in model safety, manipulation, and privacy compliance. The technical innovations in configurable safety policies and the integration of detection capabilities within a unified model provide a framework for advancing research in AI safety and security, prompting further exploration of adaptive governance in machine learning systems.

📚 Read the Full Paper