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