DSCD: Large Language Model Detoxification with Self-Constrained Decoding

Detoxification in large language models (LLMs) remains a significant research challenge. Existing decoding detoxification methods are all based on external constraints, which require additional resource overhead and lose generation fluency. This work innovatively proposes Detoxification with Self-Constrained Decoding (DSCD), a novel method for LLMs detoxification without parameter fine-tuning. DSCD strengthens the inner next-token distribution of the safety layer while weakening that of hallucination and toxic layer during output generation. This effectively diminishes toxicity and enhances output safety. DSCD offers lightweight, high compatibility, and plug-andplay capabilities, readily integrating with existing detoxification methods for further performance improvement. Extensive experiments on representative open-source LLMs and public datasets validate DSCD's effectiveness, demonstrating state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance in both detoxification and generation fluency, with superior efficiency compared to existing methods. These results highlight DSCD's potential as a practical and scalable solution for safer LLM deployments. For more details, please refer to the project repository: https://github.com/ZHANGJINKUI/DSCD .