Resolution Thresholds in VLM Detection of Harmful ASCII Art Across Construction Modes and Languages

Abstract

Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are increasingly deployed as content moderation tools, yet they remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks in which harmful text is visually encoded as ASCII art. This can allow inappropriate or harmful content to bypass moderation systems. To address this vulnerability, this paper investigates how image resolution affects VLM detection of harmful ASCII art across eight character construction modes (L1-L8), ranging from dense block characters to word-embedded designs. We evaluate eight state-of-the-art VLMs on English and Chinese corpora using a pipeline that generates ASCII art images at ten resolution scales, probing whether a consistent detection-failure threshold exists across models, modes, and languages. Results indicate that detection rates decline sharply above certain resolution thresholds, and that word-based modes are the most resistant to detection across the full resolution range. These findings reveal a systematic vulnerability in VLM-based content moderation systems and motivate resolution-aware evaluation standards.