arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language · · 3 min read

MME-Safety: A Fine-grained Benchmark for Safety Evaluation of MLLMs

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

arXiv:2609.20850 (cs)
[Submitted on 8 Aug 2026]

Title:MME-Safety: A Fine-grained Benchmark for Safety Evaluation of MLLMs

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Abstract:While Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) show remarkable advancements, their cross-modal capabilities introduce complex vulnerabilities that easily bypass unimodal filters. Existing benchmarks lack fine-grained intent-related annotations and rely on unidimensional metrics, hindering comprehensive robustness evaluation. To address this, we propose MME-Safety, a rigorously verified benchmark featuring a unique four-dimensional annotation schema that categorizes risk scenarios, harm severity, and modality-specific stealth levels. Furthermore, we introduce a hierarchical evaluation framework to assess fundamental response reliability, actual risk exposure, and the structural integrity of defensive behaviors. Extensive zero-shot evaluations across 17 state-of-the-art MLLMs provide a comprehensive safety profile of current multimodal systems. Our analysis systematically investigates cross-modal input configurations and uncovers safety implications associated with Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning. These multifaceted findings underscore the urgent need for robust, reasoning-aware safety alignment in the multimodal landscape.
Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL); Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
Cite as: arXiv:2609.20850 [cs.CL]
  (or arXiv:2609.20850v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.20850
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Yilian Shi [view email]
[v1] Sat, 8 Aug 2026 02:49:39 UTC (23,806 KB)
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