ARTFEED — Contemporary Art Intelligence

TRACER: Semantic-Aware Framework for Code LLM Contamination Detection

ai-technology · 2026-05-26

A team of researchers has created TRACER, a framework designed to detect data contamination in large language models (LLMs) with a focus on semantics. Unlike conventional approaches that prioritize exact matches, TRACER assesses contamination through three semantic dimensions: Functionally Identical, Nearly Identical, and Shared Logic. It utilizes a coarse-to-fine detection pipeline. Additionally, the researchers established the first benchmark for fine-grained code contamination detection, encompassing three popular benchmarks and three representative post-training datasets. TRACER exhibited impressive results across various LLM architectures, with GPT-5 achieving an F1 score of 0.91 for fine-grained detection and 0.92 for binary detection, surpassing existing techniques by 42%-217%. Its effectiveness was further confirmed through ablation studies and error analysis.

Key facts

  • TRACER is a semantic-aware framework for fine-grained code contamination detection in code LLMs.
  • It models contamination at three levels: Functionally Identical, Nearly Identical, and Shared Logic.
  • Detection uses a coarse-to-fine pipeline.
  • First benchmark for fine-grained code contamination detection introduced.
  • Benchmark spans three widely used benchmarks and three post-training datasets.
  • GPT-5 achieved F1 of 0.91 in fine-grained detection.
  • Binary detection F1 of 0.92, outperforming existing methods by 42%-217%.
  • Ablation studies and error analysis conducted.

Entities

Institutions

  • arXiv

Sources