May 24, 2026
Compressed files, expanded drama
Perceptual Image Codec: What Matters in Practical Learned Image Compression
Apple says this new photo shrinker is magic — commenters say “show us the sweater”
TLDR: Apple says its new PICO system can make photos much smaller without hurting how they look, and do it fast enough on a phone to matter. Commenters are split between impressed and deeply suspicious, arguing over missing sweater details, cherry-picked comparisons, and whether this is real progress or polished demo magic.
Apple researchers rolled out PICO, a new way to shrink image files that claims eye-popping wins: photos that look just as good to humans while using 2.3 to 3 times less data than several big-name rivals, plus surprisingly quick performance on a phone. On paper, that sounds like a total mic drop. In the comments, though? Instant forensic chaos.
The biggest mood was a mix of “wow” and “wait a second.” One crowd loved the ambition and immediately started dreaming bigger, with one commenter suggesting future versions should judge whether an image still keeps its meaning, not just its look. Another did the classic internet move: “cool if true,” while also dropping a handy paper link and wondering if this is secretly headed for iPhones.
But the skeptics absolutely stole the show. The most dramatic critique fixated on a sweater photo in the paper, with one user saying the knitting wasn’t merely softened — it looked “completely wrong.” That kicked off the real fear behind all this: are these systems preserving your photo, or quietly inventing details that feel right until you zoom in? Others side-eyed the benchmark battle itself, asking why PICO was compared mostly with video-based formats instead of familiar image standards like JPEG XL. And when Apple called 150 milliseconds “fast,” one commenter basically replied: for a giant modern photo, that’s not fast, that’s ‘oof.’ In other words, the tech is impressive, but the comments section is demanding receipts.
Key Points
- •The article introduces PICO as a learned image codec designed for practical use and optimized for the human visual system.
- •PICO was derived through a large exploration of modeling choices and a search over millions of model configurations.
- •Based on large-scale subjective user studies, the article reports 2.3-3× bitrate savings versus AV1, AV2, VVC, ECM, and JPEG-AI.
- •The article reports 20-40% bitrate savings versus the best learned codec alternatives.
- •On an iPhone 17 Pro Max, PICO is reported to encode 12MP images in as fast as 230 ms and decode them in 150 ms, while also offering cross-platform robustness guarantees.