Towards Trustworthy Retrieval Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances AI-generated content by integrating external knowledge, improving relevance, and reducing hallucinations. However, RAG also introduces risks related to reliability, safety, privacy, fairness, explainability, and accountability, which impact trustworthiness. While various methods aim to address these concerns, a unified framework is lacking. This survey bridges that gap by presenting a comprehensive roadmap for trustworthy RAG systems. We provide a structured analysis of key challenges, existing solutions, and future directions across these aspects. We further organize the field around how the retrieval and generation stages and the six trustworthiness dimensions interact, demonstrating their synergies and trade-offs through a controlled cross-dimensional analysis. Additionally, we highlight downstream applications where trustworthy RAG can make a significant impact, encouraging further research and adoption in real-world AI systems.