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Re:Silly Image Compression Idea by SamBam on Sunday April 10, 2022 @10:08PM (#30983775)
I do wonder if all the new AI-based "upscaling" algorithms, which can fill in detail to make an image larger, can be used to produce a compression-decompression algorithm: Perform a heavily lossy compression, then "upscale" the result and see if it returns to a good-enough match. If so, compress even further, until your upscaling no longer gives you a good-enough match.

Like regular JPG encoding, this can be set to an arbitrary level of "good enough."

Re:Silly Image Compression Idea by yobbo on Monday April 11, 2022 @05:17AM (#30986393)
This has been tried in research and works, with typical artefacts such as horses getting zebra-stripes if they stand in tall grass (or something like that ...)
Re:Silly Image Compression Idea by eru on Monday April 11, 2022 @05:25AM (#30986442)
That sounds very similar to Dürer's Rhinoceros. Or in general, learned people trying to draw from even detailed descriptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrer%27s_Rhinoceros

> Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1515.[1] The image is based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros that had arrived in Lisbon in 1515.[2] Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times.

Re:Silly Image Compression Idea by zone411 on Monday April 11, 2022 @01:32AM (#30985035)
That's pretty much how AI image compression works - you're describing standard autoencoder (encoder/decoder) architecture with some adaptiveness.
Re:Silly Image Compression Idea by hansvm on Monday April 11, 2022 @11:03AM (#30989774)
This works, and there's also a fun variant where you then losslessly compress the residual between ground truth and the up-sampled image. Since most of the information was encoded in the NN and already exists at both ends, the data requirements in between are modest.
Re:Silly Image Compression Idea by IIAOPSW on Monday April 11, 2022 @04:39AM (#30986159)
Sufficiently good compression is necessarily dimensionality reduction. Out of compression AI can be jerryrigged, and out of AI compression can be jerryrigged. This truth may be relevant to the evolutionary history of natural intelligence.