The paper introduces RAE-CoD, a diffusion-based compression method that operates in a representation autoencoder space to preserve recognizable content even at extremely low bitrates. It addresses the problem of semantic collapse observed in existing codecs when the bitrate approaches zero, showing that reconstruction losses conflict with semantic objectives and that VAE diffusion models lose efficiency in preserving semantics. Experiments on MSCOCO-30K demonstrate that RAE-CoD outperforms competitors, reducing VFM feature MSE and Fréchet Distance ratios by at least 25.7% and 69.1% at 0.001–0.008 bpp while maintaining stable recognizability and quality.
By Tianyu Zhang, Zhaoyang Jia, Houqiang Li, Dong Liu
arXiv:2608.28687v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Generative models have significantly improved the performance ceiling of image lossy compression at low bitrates by exploiting learned priors. However,...
By Jiarun Chen, Kejun Wu, Li Li, Chengtao Cai, Zhengguo Li, Chia-Wen Lin
Large language model (LLM)-based lossless image compression methods typically represent pixel data through the native text interface of a pretrained model, converting pixel values into token sequences that the LLM processes through its vocabulary head. This design shows that pretrained language models can provide probability estimates for image coding, but it also couples compression to tokenizer behavior, vocabulary-specific numeric tokens, and model-family-specific adaptation.
arXiv:2601. 10267v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Separate Source-Channel Coding (SSCC) remains attractive for text transmission due to its modularity and compatibility with mature entropy coders and powerful channel codes.
By Ziqiong Wang, Tianqi Ren, Rongpeng Li, Zhifeng Zhao, Honggang Zhang
arXiv:2609.39451v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Progressive autoregressive image codecs provide an appealing paradigm for generative compression by quantizing continuous latents into discrete tokens,...
By Qin Yan, Ruixiao Dong, Yutao Xie, Li Li, Ying Chen, Kai Li, Daowen Li, Houqiang Li
This article reviews recent diffusion‑based methods for generative lossy image compression, highlighting how these techniques encode a source into an embedding and use a diffusion model to iteratively refine the reconstruction during decoding. It discusses the role of auxiliary entropy models for transmitting the embedding, explores the use of diffusion models for information transmission via channel simulation, and frames the discussion within rate‑distortion‑perception theory, common randomness, and inverse‑problem connections. The review also identifies open challenges in the field.
By Yibo Yang, Stephan Mandt
arXiv:2606. 10450v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: DiffC provides a principled way to reuse pre-trained diffusion models for lossy compression, but its encoding and decoding procedures remain slow because they require many discretized forward and reverse steps.
By Fuma Kimishima, Jinjia Zhou
arXiv:2608.29997v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We propose Discrete Diffusion Bridges (DDB), a novel framework designed to resolve the fundamental spatiotemporal misalignment of standard discrete dif...
By Xing Xie, Jiawei Liu, Shijun Zhou, Huijie Fan, Zhi Han, Yandong Tang, Liangqiong Qu
Most existing extreme compression methods fail to achieve an optimal rate-distortion-perception trade-off, as they typically prioritize perceptual fidelity and visual realism over pixel-level accuracy. Consequently, the resulting reconstructions often deviate noticeably from the originals.
Learned image compression (LIC) has achieved impressive rate-distortion performance. However, existing methods remain highly vulnerable to packet loss, a common challenge in satellite and emergency communications.
Perceptual quality enhancement of severely compressed videos remains challenging due to complex artifact patterns and substantial information loss. Recent diffusion models have demonstrated strong generative capability for visual restoration, but directly applying them to compressed video often ignores compression degradation characteristics and may introduce structure-inconsistent hallucinations.
arXiv:2609.39222v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: High-compression tokenizers are essential for scaling latent image generative models. However, aggressive compression creates a fundamental tradeoff be...
By Xu Huang, Ye Huang, Zijun Liao, Yuwei Niu, Xiaojie Li, Menghan Zhou, De Wen Soh, Xiaotong Li, Daquan Zhou