Dong, Yi 
ORCID: 0000-0003-3047-7777, Mu, Ronghui, Zhang, Yanghao, Sun, Siqi, Zhang, Tianle, Wu, Changshun, Jin, Gaojie, Qi, Yi, Hu, Jinwei, Meng, Jie et al (show 2 more authors)
(2025)
Safeguarding large language models: a survey
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE REVIEW, 58 (12).
382-.
ISSN 0269-2821, 1573-7462
Abstract
In the burgeoning field of Large Language Models (LLMs), developing a robust safety mechanism, colloquially known as “safeguards” or “guardrails”, has become imperative to ensure the ethical use of LLMs within prescribed boundaries. This article provides a systematic literature review on the current status of this critical mechanism. It discusses its major challenges and how it can be enhanced into a comprehensive mechanism dealing with ethical issues in various contexts. First, the paper elucidates the current landscape of safeguarding mechanisms that major LLM service providers and the open-source community employ. This is followed by the techniques to evaluate, analyze, and enhance some (un)desirable properties that a guardrail might want to enforce, such as hallucinations, fairness, privacy, and so on. Based on them, we review techniques to circumvent these controls (i.e., attacks), to defend the attacks, and to reinforce the guardrails. While the techniques mentioned above represent the current status and the active research trends, we also discuss several challenges that cannot be easily dealt with by the methods and present our vision on how to implement a comprehensive guardrail through the full consideration of multi-disciplinary approach, neural-symbolic method, and systems development lifecycle.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Large language models, Generative AI, Safeguards, Guardrails, Trustworthy AI |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science & Engineering Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Computer Science & Informatics Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Computer Science & Informatics > Artificial Intelligence |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Nov 2025 09:38 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jun 2026 20:15 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10462-025-11389-2 |
| Open Access URL: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-025-11389-2 |
| Related Websites: | |
| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3195295 |
| Disclaimer: | The University of Liverpool is not responsible for content contained on other websites from links within repository metadata. Please contact us if you notice anything that appears incorrect or inappropriate. |
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