I-CARE: Analysis of interference-related phenomena in a controllable, diverse and representative unlearning setting for text-to-image models

arXiv:2609.00003v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Machine unlearning studies the removal of knowledge from an AI model, making the system forget a concept it previously learned.

Despite rapid progress in generative machine unlearning, the unintended degradation of semantically related concepts that should have been retained (henceforth, interference) remains poorly characterized and inconsistently evaluated.

This paper introduces I-CARE, a methodology that formalizes interference as a first-class object of study in generative unlearning. Rather than proposing a new benchmark or unlearning algorithm, I-CARE provides formal definitions for tasks, metrics, and templates for reporting results, enabling the systematic and reproducible study of interference across unlearning settings.

While our methodology is designed to remain valid as models and unlearning algorithms evolve, decoupling long-term scientific insight from transient empirical results, we present a feasibility demonstration with state-of-the-art algorithms and frequently used datasets.

The results demonstrate that I-CARE enables meaningful analysis of interference patterns across multiple unlearning settings, establishing the practical applicability of the framework.

The software implementation of the methodology is provided in an open-source framework, together with a web-based graphical interface that enables exploration of the outcomes of this study without requiring direct interaction with the codebase or specialized data analysis tools.