Argot: Generating Adversarial Readable Chinese Texts

Argot: Generating Adversarial Readable Chinese Texts

Zihan Zhang, Mingxuan Liu, Chao Zhang, Yiming Zhang, Zhou Li, Qi Li, Haixin Duan, Donghong Sun

Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 2533-2539. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2020/351

Natural language processing (NLP) models are known vulnerable to adversarial examples, similar to image processing models. Studying adversarial texts is an essential step to improve the robustness of NLP models. However, existing studies mainly focus on analyzing English texts and generating adversarial examples for English texts. There is no work studying the possibility and effect of the transformation to another language, e.g, Chinese. In this paper, we analyze the differences between Chinese and English, and explore the methodology to transform the existing English adversarial generation method to Chinese. We propose a novel black-box adversarial Chinese texts generation solution Argot, by utilizing the method for adversarial English samples and several novel methods developed on Chinese characteristics. Argot could effectively and efficiently generate adversarial Chinese texts with good readability. Furthermore, Argot could also automatically generate targeted Chinese adversarial text, achieving a high success rate and ensuring readability of the Chinese.
Keywords:
Machine Learning: Adversarial Machine Learning
Natural Language Processing: Natural Language Processing