Safe Semantics, Unsafe Interpretations: Tackling Implicit Reasoning Safety in Large Vision-Language Models

Wei Cai; Jian Zhao; Yuchu Jiang; Tianle Zhang; Xuelong Li

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arXiv · 2508.08926

Safe Semantics, Unsafe Interpretations: Tackling Implicit Reasoning Safety in Large Vision-Language Models

Wei Cai·Jian Zhao·Yuchu Jiang·Tianle Zhang·Xuelong Li

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Abstract

Large Vision-Language Models face growing safety challenges with multimodal inputs. This paper introduces the concept of Implicit Reasoning Safety, a vulnerability in LVLMs. Benign combined inputs trigger unsafe LVLM outputs due to flawed or hidden reasoning. To showcase this, we developed Safe Semantics, Unsafe Interpretations, the first dataset for this critical issue. Our demonstrations show that even simple In-Context Learning with SSUI significantly mitigates these implicit multimodal threats, underscoring the urgent need to improve cross-modal implicit reasoning.

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Wei Cai, Jian Zhao, Yuchu Jiang, Tianle Zhang, Xuelong Li. 2025-08-12. Safe Semantics, Unsafe Interpretations: Tackling Implicit Reasoning Safety in Large Vision-Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08926

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