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arXiv · 2610.05000

VisualErase: Dual-Branch Visual Trajectory Redirection for Robust Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models

Qianlong Xiang·Miao Zhang·Kun Wang·Yupeng Hu·Junhui Hou·Liqiang Nie
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Abstract

Concept erasure is essential for the safe deployment of text-to-image diffusion models, as they may reproduce harmful, copyrighted, or privacy-sensitive content learned from unconstrained large-scale data. Existing methods typically erase unwanted concepts while preserving general generation capability by redirecting target-related text-to-image mappings. However, recent studies show that erased models may still retain visual generative trajectories of target concepts, leaving them vulnerable to adversarial recovery attacks and revealing a fundamental gap between redirecting text-to-image mappings and truly removing visual knowledge. To bridge this gap, we propose VisualErase, a new paradigm that redirects concept-bearing visual generative trajectories toward explicitly defined concept-removed outcomes. To enable this redirection, we use structure-preserving image editing to construct content-aligned, concept-removed counterparts for source images, providing explicit visual endpoints that retain non-target content. We then derive a denoising target from each source-to-counterpart pair and use a dual-branch redirection loss to align both text-conditioned and unconditional predictions with this target, since conditional supervision alone does not explicitly constrain generation without textual guidance. To mitigate the adverse effects of concept erasure on non-target generation, we jointly optimize the redirection loss with a counterpart retention loss that matches denoising predictions from the frozen pretrained model. Across style, celebrity, and nudity erasure, VisualErase limits the maximum attack success rate over seven attacks to 0%, 8%, and 0.1%, respectively, while retaining general generation quality. These results highlight the importance of visual trajectory redirection for robust concept erasure beyond text-to-image mappings alone.

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Qianlong Xiang, Miao Zhang, Kun Wang, Yupeng Hu, Junhui Hou, Liqiang Nie. 2026-10-04. VisualErase: Dual-Branch Visual Trajectory Redirection for Robust Concept Erasure in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05000

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