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arXiv · 2504.08813

SafeMLRM: Demystifying Safety in Multi-modal Large Reasoning Models

Junfeng Fang·Yukai Wang·Ruipeng Wang·Zijun Yao·Kun Wang·An Zhang·Xiang Wang·Tat-Seng Chua
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Abstract

The rapid advancement of multi-modal large reasoning models (MLRMs) -- enhanced versions of multimodal language models (MLLMs) equipped with reasoning capabilities -- has revolutionized diverse applications. However, their safety implications remain underexplored. While prior work has exposed critical vulnerabilities in unimodal reasoning models, MLRMs introduce distinct risks from cross-modal reasoning pathways. This work presents the first systematic safety analysis of MLRMs through large-scale empirical studies comparing MLRMs with their base MLLMs. Our experiments reveal three critical findings: (1) The Reasoning Tax: Acquiring reasoning capabilities catastrophically degrades inherited safety alignment. MLRMs exhibit 37.44% higher jailbreaking success rates than base MLLMs under adversarial attacks. (2) Safety Blind Spots: While safety degradation is pervasive, certain scenarios (e.g., Illegal Activity) suffer 25 times higher attack rates -- far exceeding the average 3.4 times increase, revealing scenario-specific vulnerabilities with alarming cross-model and datasets consistency. (3) Emergent Self-Correction: Despite tight reasoning-answer safety coupling, MLRMs demonstrate nascent self-correction -- 16.9% of jailbroken reasoning steps are overridden by safe answers, hinting at intrinsic safeguards. These findings underscore the urgency of scenario-aware safety auditing and mechanisms to amplify MLRMs' self-correction potential. To catalyze research, we open-source OpenSafeMLRM, the first toolkit for MLRM safety evaluation, providing unified interface for mainstream models, datasets, and jailbreaking methods. Our work calls for immediate efforts to harden reasoning-augmented AI, ensuring its transformative potential aligns with ethical safeguards.

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Junfeng Fang, Yukai Wang, Ruipeng Wang, Zijun Yao, Kun Wang, An Zhang, Xiang Wang, Tat-Seng Chua. 2025-04-09. SafeMLRM: Demystifying Safety in Multi-modal Large Reasoning Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08813

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