What is adversarial-robustness-toolbox?

trusted-ai/adversarial-robustness-toolbox — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-26

★ 5,983PythonAudience · researcherComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · moderate

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((ART))
    What it does
      Test AI for weaknesses
      Build AI defenses
    Attack types
      Evasion attacks
      Poisoning attacks
      Model extraction
      Inference attacks
    Supported frameworks
      TensorFlow
      PyTorch
      Keras
      scikit-learn
    Data types
      Images
      Audio
      Tabular data
    Audience
      ML engineers
      Security researchers

mindmap root((ART)) What it does Test AI for weaknesses Build AI defenses Attack types Evasion attacks Poisoning attacks Model extraction Inference attacks Supported frameworks TensorFlow PyTorch Keras scikit-learn Data types Images Audio Tabular data Audience ML engineers Security researchers

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Test a trained image classifier to see how well it resists pixel-level adversarial attacks.

USE CASE 2

Apply adversarial training to a PyTorch model to make it harder to fool with crafted inputs.

USE CASE 3

Evaluate whether your model leaks private training data through its predictions using an inference attack.

USE CASE 4

Simulate a model extraction attack to check if your API exposes too much about the underlying model.

What is it built with?

PythonTensorFlowPyTorchKerasscikit-learn

How does it compare?

	trusted-ai/adversarial-robustness-toolbox	cloud-custodian/cloud-custodian	argosopentech/argos-translate
Stars	5,983	5,983	5,981
Language	Python	Python	Python
Setup difficulty	moderate	moderate	easy
Complexity	4/5	3/5	2/5
Audience	researcher	ops devops	developer

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires a working ML framework such as TensorFlow or PyTorch plus specific optional dependencies for the attack or defense you want to use.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

So what is it?

This is a Python library for testing and defending machine learning models against security threats. The core idea is that AI models can be fooled or manipulated in specific ways, and this toolkit gives researchers and developers the methods to both carry out those attacks (to find weaknesses) and build defenses against them. The library covers four main categories of threat. Evasion is when an attacker subtly alters input data, like tweaking pixels in an image, to trick a model into making wrong predictions. Poisoning is when an attacker corrupts the training data before a model is trained, causing the resulting model to behave badly in specific situations. Extraction is when an attacker probes a model repeatedly to steal a copy of it without direct access to its weights. Inference is when an attacker uses a model's outputs to learn private information about the data it was trained on. The toolbox works with most popular machine learning frameworks including TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, and scikit-learn. It also supports different types of input data: images, audio, video, and tabular data. Common tasks like image classification, object detection, and speech recognition are all covered. This project is hosted by the Linux Foundation AI and Data Foundation and was partially funded through a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract. It is open source under the MIT license and accepts contributions. There is a Slack workspace for community discussion. This is a technical research tool intended for machine learning engineers and security researchers who want to audit or harden AI systems. If you are not working directly with machine learning models in code, this library is not something you would use directly.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Using the Adversarial Robustness Toolbox in Python, show me how to generate an FGSM evasion attack against a PyTorch image classifier and measure how accuracy drops.

Prompt 2

Using ART, apply adversarial training to a scikit-learn classifier to make it more robust against poisoning attacks.

Prompt 3

Show me how to use adversarial-robustness-toolbox to run a membership inference attack on a Keras model and interpret the output.

Prompt 4

Using ART model extraction tools in Python, simulate an attack that copies a black-box model by querying it repeatedly.

Prompt 5

Set up ART to run an evasion attack against an object detection model and compare results with and without a defense applied.

Frequently asked questions