SignGPT: Toward LLM-Mediated Sign Language Interaction through Gloss-Free Translation and Generation

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) provide limited support for sign language interaction. Unifying sign language translation (SLT) and generation (SLG) to enable sign language as both input and output can reduce switching between separate models during sign-text interaction. We present SignGPT, a unified, pose-based framework for gloss-free SLT and SLG. SignGPT integrates part-aware hierarchical representations of body, hand, and facial motion into a shared language model and employs asymmetric multi-token prediction and progressive training for bidirectional modeling. We evaluate SignGPT on How2Sign (ASL) and Phoenix-2014T (DGS) through benchmark comparisons, qualitative analyses, and component ablations. An exploratory study with 12 Deaf ASL signers assesses an LLM-mediated sign-to-sign response pipeline, highlighting the potential of unified modeling to support sign language conversation (SLC).