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A Comprehensive Survey of Machine Unlearning Techniques for Large Language Models

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arxiv 2503.01854 v2 pith:TAIX6MRP submitted 2025-02-22 cs.CL cs.AI

A Comprehensive Survey of Machine Unlearning Techniques for Large Language Models

classification cs.CL cs.AI
keywords unlearningcomprehensivecurrentexistinglanguagelargellmsmachine
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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This study investigates the machine unlearning techniques within the context of large language models (LLMs), referred to as \textit{LLM unlearning}. LLM unlearning offers a principled approach to removing the influence of undesirable data (e.g., sensitive or illegal information) from LLMs, while preserving their overall utility without requiring full retraining. Despite growing research interest, there is no comprehensive survey that systematically organizes existing work and distills key insights; here, we aim to bridge this gap. We begin by introducing the definition and the paradigms of LLM unlearning, followed by a comprehensive taxonomy of existing unlearning studies. Next, we categorize current unlearning approaches, summarizing their strengths and limitations. Additionally, we review evaluation metrics and benchmarks, providing a structured overview of current assessment methodologies. Finally, we outline promising directions for future research, highlighting key challenges and opportunities in the field.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Visual-Noise Guided In-Context Distillation for Multimodal Large Language Model Unlearning

    cs.CV 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    VGID constructs an intervention-induced teacher distribution via visual perturbation plus textual in-context unlearning and distills it into the student MLLM to achieve parameter-level forgetting.

  2. Distinguishable Deletion: Unifying Knowledge Erasure and Refusal for Large Language Model Unlearning

    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Distinguishable Deletion unifies knowledge erasure and refusal for LLM unlearning via an energy index that enforces boundaries during training and enables refusal at inference.

  3. Unlearners Can Lie: Evaluating and Improving Honesty in LLM Unlearning

    cs.LG 2026-05 conditional novelty 6.0

    Existing LLM unlearning methods fail honesty standards by hallucinating on forgotten knowledge; ReVa improves rejection rates nearly twofold while enhancing retained honesty.

  4. WIN-U: Woodbury-Informed Newton-Unlearning as a retain-free Machine Unlearning Framework

    cs.LG 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    WIN-U delivers a retain-free unlearning update that approximates the gold-standard retrained model via a Woodbury-informed Newton step using only forget-set curvature information.

  5. Towards Reliable Forgetting: A Survey on Machine Unlearning Verification

    cs.LG 2025-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    A survey that organizes machine unlearning verification methods into behavioral and parametric categories and outlines open problems.

  6. Multimodal Unlearning Across Vision, Language, Video, and Audio: Survey of Methods, Datasets, and Benchmarks

    cs.LG 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    A system-first taxonomy and literature synthesis of multimodal unlearning across vision, language, video, and audio, with datasets, benchmarks, metrics, applications, and open challenges.

  7. Trustworthy Agent Network: Trust in Agent Networks Must Be Baked In, Not Bolted On

    cs.AI 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Argues that trustworthiness in Agent-to-Agent networks requires a new conceptual framework with four design pillars baked in from the beginning, as retrofitting existing single-agent methods is insufficient.