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New backdoor attack targets multimodal AI models

Researchers have identified a new type of backdoor vulnerability, dubbed ToBAC, that specifically targets Unified Autoregressive Models (UAMs). These models, capable of generating both text and image tokens, are susceptible to multimodal backdoor attacks where subtle triggers can manipulate outputs across different modalities. The ToBAC attack can be implemented through data poisoning or model poisoning, leading to harmful or biased content generation. Experiments showed significant success rates, with one attack influencing brand promotion or ideological content in 55% of generations for the Liquid model and another achieving 63.1% success against JanusPro via data poisoning. AI

IMPACT Highlights potential security risks in multimodal AI, necessitating new defense strategies.

RANK_REASON Academic paper detailing a new type of vulnerability in AI models. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

New backdoor attack targets multimodal AI models

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Academic paper detailing a new type of vulnerability in AI models. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Tobias Braun, Jonas Henry Grebe, Hossein Shakibania, Anna Rohrbach, Marcus Rohrbach ·

    Token by Token, Compromised: Backdoor Vulnerabilities in Unified Autoregressive Models

    arXiv:2605.19227v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Unified autoregressive models (UAMs) are transformer models that generate text as well as image tokens within a single autoregressive pass. Shared parameters and a multimodal vocabulary simplify the training pipeline and f…