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MPAI MPEG ISO

MPAI celebrates its first anniversary approving 3 standards for publication

Geneva, Switzerland – 30 September 2021. Today, at its 12th General Assembly, the Moving Pic­ture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence (MPAI) standards developing organisation has approved 3 standards for publication as MPAI standards. Established exactly one year ago as an international, unaffiliated, not for profit association, MPAI is proud to announce that the first two AI-powered standards approved today serve two of the many industries targeted by MPAI: financial risk assessment and human-to-machine communic­ation. The 3rd standard addresses…

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Looking forward to MPAI’s 12th General Assembly

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MPAI’s 12th General Assembly (MPAI-12) is not going to be like any of the other previous 12 General Assemblies (MPAI was established at MPAI-0) and the the reason is simple to explain. So far MPAI has made big announcements about its plans to develop AI-based data coding standards. In less than two weeks it plans on releasing the first three standards. At its last General Assembly (MPAI-11), it actually published the WDs of the working drafts of the three standards…

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Excerpts from an interview

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I have been interviewed by the Chinese webzine LiveVideoStack. The questions were smart and gave me the opportunity to make my views known. Here is an extract of the questions on MPEG and of my answers. The full interview is here. LiveVideoStack: Your new book Even the stars die: The history of MPEG and how it made digital media happen has been published this summer, congratulations! Could you tell us what inspired you to write it? Leonardo: There is no…

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Video compression patents – an obtuse story

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People who look back at the MPEG-2 times as the golden age of video compression licensing have a point. For 20 years the ownership of an MPEG-2 Video and Systems patent was a licence to print money – just ask people in the industry. What those people don’t consider, however, is that the MPEG-2 licensing was not the first case of the new video compression licensing but the last case of the old consumer electronics licensing – just look at…

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The governance of the MPAI ecosystem

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Artificial Intelligence is not just another technology coming to the fore as humankind has seen many time before. By mimicking the way humans interpret and act on the new based on their experience, AI may influence its users in subtle ways. The MPAI Statutes read that MPAI’s mission is to produce standards for Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial intelligence. While Moving Pictures and Audio have been singled out in the mission because of their importance, ultimately they…

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MPAI standards

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MPAI’s raison d’être is developing standards. So, including the word in the title looks like a pleonasm. But there is a reason: the word standard can be used to mean several things. Let’s first explore which ones. In my order of importance the first is “information representation”. If there were no standard saying that 65 (in 7 or 8 bits) means “A” and 97 means “a” there would be no email and no WWW. Actually there would not have been…

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