$\mu^2$-Bench: A Multilingual Machine Unlearning Benchmark

Abstract:Undesired information such as harmful content and private data propagates through Multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) via direct training and indirect cross-linguistic spread. Multilingual Machine Unlearning (MMU) aims to remove such information, yet its evaluation remains underexplored, leaving unclear whether unlearning truly eliminates target knowledge across all languages. To bridge this gap, we introduce $\mu^2$-Bench, an MMU benchmark that simulates the full pipeline of memorization, unlearning, and evaluation across diverse languages. It 1) spans a broad set of languages, 2) evaluates on both training and hold-out languages, and 3) assesses knowledge as dispersed across multiple languages. We show that successful MMU requires methods that reflect multilingual characteristics, and conduct analysis to provide deeper insights into MMU.

Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2609.20945 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2609.20945v1 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.20945 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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