We present a machine learning-based approach to lossy image compression which outperforms all existing codecs, while running in real-time.

Our algorithm typically produces file sizes 3 times smaller than JPEG, 2.5 times smaller than JPEG 2000, and 2.3 times smaller than WebP on datasets of generic images across a spectrum of quality levels. At the same time, our codec is designed to be lightweight and deployable: for example, it can encode or decode the Kodak dataset in less than 10ms per image on GPU.

Our architecture is an autoencoder featuring pyramidal analysis, an adaptive coding module, and regularization of the expected codelength. We also supplement our approach with adversarial training specialized towards use in a compression setting: this enables us to produce visually pleasing reconstructions for very low bitrates.