Apple has released PICO (Perceptual Image Codec), an AI-based still-image codec, along with an accompanying paper and code. PICO is designed for human visual quality and mobile-class runtime, aiming to make machine learning-based image compression practical for camera pipelines, photo storage, and cloud services. The codec claims significant bitrate savings over existing standards like AV1/AV2/VVC in subjective tests.
PICO makes learned image compression look practical rather than purely experimental: Apple is pairing subjective quality gains with iPhone-class latency, which matters for camera pipelines, photo libraries, and cloud storage workflows. The competitive reference set is telling too, with Apple benchmarking against AV1, AV2, VVC, and JPEG-AI rather than just JPEG or HEVC-era formats. The key signal to watch is whether Apple’s published code and models lead to broader adoption or follow-on work around 12-MP, mobile-runtime learned codecs.
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