Diffusion-Based 3D Sign Language Motion Anonymization: A Feasibility Study on Balancing Identity Confusion and Semantic Preservation

Dai, Zixuan | Sako, Shinji

Volume:: Proceedings of the LREC2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion
Venue:: Palma, Mallorca, Spain
Date:: 16 May 2026
Pages:: 93–99
Publisher:: European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Licence:: CC BY-NC 4.0
sign-lang ID:: 26006
ISBN:: 978-2-493814-82-1

Abstract

Sign language motions contain individual-specific kinematic features. As the engineering applications of sign language become more widespread, privacy protection of sign language data has emerged as a new challenge. This paper proposes a diffusion model-based approach for sign language motion anonymization. The proposed framework combines conditional diffusion processes with adversarial training to transform identity features while preserving semantic information. For the design and preliminary validation of the proposed model, we conduct a proof-of-concept experiment using a subset of 22 signers from the ASL100 dataset of WLASL, which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach for sign language anonymization.

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Citation in ACL Citation Format

Zixuan Dai, Shinji Sako. 2026. Diffusion-Based 3D Sign Language Motion Anonymization: A Feasibility Study on Balancing Identity Confusion and Semantic Preservation. In Proceedings of the LREC2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion, pages 93–99, Palma, Mallorca, Spain. European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

BibTeX Export

@inproceedings{dai:26006:sign-lang:lrec,
  author    = {Dai, Zixuan and Sako, Shinji},
  title     = {Diffusion-Based {3D} Sign Language Motion Anonymization: A Feasibility Study on Balancing Identity Confusion and Semantic Preservation},
  pages     = {93--99},
  editor    = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Mesch, Johanna and Schulder, Marc},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2026} 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion},
  maintitle = {15th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2026)},
  publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
  address   = {Palma, Mallorca, Spain},
  day       = {16},
  month     = may,
  year      = {2026},
  isbn      = {978-2-493814-82-1},
  language  = {english},
  url       = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/26006.html}
}