English

Lessons from Defending Gemini Against Indirect Prompt Injections

Cryptography and Security 2025-05-21 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

Gemini is increasingly used to perform tasks on behalf of users, where function-calling and tool-use capabilities enable the model to access user data. Some tools, however, require access to untrusted data introducing risk. Adversaries can embed malicious instructions in untrusted data which cause the model to deviate from the user's expectations and mishandle their data or permissions. In this report, we set out Google DeepMind's approach to evaluating the adversarial robustness of Gemini models and describe the main lessons learned from the process. We test how Gemini performs against a sophisticated adversary through an adversarial evaluation framework, which deploys a suite of adaptive attack techniques to run continuously against past, current, and future versions of Gemini. We describe how these ongoing evaluations directly help make Gemini more resilient against manipulation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.14534,
  title  = {Lessons from Defending Gemini Against Indirect Prompt Injections},
  author = {Chongyang Shi and Sharon Lin and Shuang Song and Jamie Hayes and Ilia Shumailov and Itay Yona and Juliette Pluto and Aneesh Pappu and Christopher A. Choquette-Choo and Milad Nasr and Chawin Sitawarin and Gena Gibson and Andreas Terzis and John "Four" Flynn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.14534},
  year   = {2025}
}