Unified Safe In-context Image Generation in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers via Restricting Unsafe Information Flows

Xiang Yang, Feifei Li, Mi Zhang, Geng Hong, Xiaoyu You, Mi Wen, Min Yang
Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 306:145250-145274, 2026.

Abstract

Diffusion transformers (DiTs) equipped with multimodal attention (MM-Attn) have become a dominant paradigm for image generation. However, preventing the generation of harmful content remains a critical challenge, particularly in image-to-image (I2I) editing tasks. Existing safety mechanisms are primarily designed for text-to-image (T2I) synthesis or U-Net-based architectures, which limits their effectiveness for unified safety mitigation in DiT-based frameworks. To bridge this gap, we propose Unified Visual Safety Regulator (UVR), a training-free safe generation framework that regulates unsafe semantics in generated images. UVR is grounded in an analysis of attention dynamics from the perspective of information flow in MM-Attn. We identify a task-independent start-up stage, during which unsafe semantics in output patches rapidly emerge and can be accurately localized, followed by task-specific semantic amplification and interference stages, where harmful signals are further propagated and entangled with benign content. Based on these observations, UVR mitigates unsafe generation through unified, targeted attention modulation and explicit restriction of harmful information flow over the identified unsafe output patches. Experiments across various concepts show that UVR achieves state-of-the-art safety performance by achieving 91% and 77% erase rate in image synthesis and editing tasks, while preserving visual quality and fidelity with minimal degradation. Code is available at https://github.com/deng12yx/UVR.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v306-yang26an, title = {Unified Safe In-context Image Generation in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers via Restricting Unsafe Information Flows}, author = {Yang, Xiang and Li, Feifei and Zhang, Mi and Hong, Geng and You, Xiaoyu and Wen, Mi and Yang, Min}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning}, pages = {145250--145274}, year = {2026}, editor = {Zhang, Tong and Dudik, Miroslav and Jaggi, Martin and Agarwal, Alekh and Li, Sharon and Schuurmans, Dale and Zhu, Jerry and Berkenkamp, Felix and Dong, Hanze and Bietti, Alberto}, volume = {306}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {06--11 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v306/main/assets/yang26an/yang26an.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/yang26an.html}, abstract = {Diffusion transformers (DiTs) equipped with multimodal attention (MM-Attn) have become a dominant paradigm for image generation. However, preventing the generation of harmful content remains a critical challenge, particularly in image-to-image (I2I) editing tasks. Existing safety mechanisms are primarily designed for text-to-image (T2I) synthesis or U-Net-based architectures, which limits their effectiveness for unified safety mitigation in DiT-based frameworks. To bridge this gap, we propose Unified Visual Safety Regulator (UVR), a training-free safe generation framework that regulates unsafe semantics in generated images. UVR is grounded in an analysis of attention dynamics from the perspective of information flow in MM-Attn. We identify a task-independent start-up stage, during which unsafe semantics in output patches rapidly emerge and can be accurately localized, followed by task-specific semantic amplification and interference stages, where harmful signals are further propagated and entangled with benign content. Based on these observations, UVR mitigates unsafe generation through unified, targeted attention modulation and explicit restriction of harmful information flow over the identified unsafe output patches. Experiments across various concepts show that UVR achieves state-of-the-art safety performance by achieving 91% and 77% erase rate in image synthesis and editing tasks, while preserving visual quality and fidelity with minimal degradation. Code is available at https://github.com/deng12yx/UVR.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Unified Safe In-context Image Generation in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers via Restricting Unsafe Information Flows %A Xiang Yang %A Feifei Li %A Mi Zhang %A Geng Hong %A Xiaoyu You %A Mi Wen %A Min Yang %B Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2026 %E Tong Zhang %E Miroslav Dudik %E Martin Jaggi %E Alekh Agarwal %E Sharon Li %E Dale Schuurmans %E Jerry Zhu %E Felix Berkenkamp %E Hanze Dong %E Alberto Bietti %F pmlr-v306-yang26an %I PMLR %P 145250--145274 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/yang26an.html %V 306 %X Diffusion transformers (DiTs) equipped with multimodal attention (MM-Attn) have become a dominant paradigm for image generation. However, preventing the generation of harmful content remains a critical challenge, particularly in image-to-image (I2I) editing tasks. Existing safety mechanisms are primarily designed for text-to-image (T2I) synthesis or U-Net-based architectures, which limits their effectiveness for unified safety mitigation in DiT-based frameworks. To bridge this gap, we propose Unified Visual Safety Regulator (UVR), a training-free safe generation framework that regulates unsafe semantics in generated images. UVR is grounded in an analysis of attention dynamics from the perspective of information flow in MM-Attn. We identify a task-independent start-up stage, during which unsafe semantics in output patches rapidly emerge and can be accurately localized, followed by task-specific semantic amplification and interference stages, where harmful signals are further propagated and entangled with benign content. Based on these observations, UVR mitigates unsafe generation through unified, targeted attention modulation and explicit restriction of harmful information flow over the identified unsafe output patches. Experiments across various concepts show that UVR achieves state-of-the-art safety performance by achieving 91% and 77% erase rate in image synthesis and editing tasks, while preserving visual quality and fidelity with minimal degradation. Code is available at https://github.com/deng12yx/UVR.
APA
Yang, X., Li, F., Zhang, M., Hong, G., You, X., Wen, M. & Yang, M.. (2026). Unified Safe In-context Image Generation in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers via Restricting Unsafe Information Flows. Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 306:145250-145274 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/yang26an.html.

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