AI has generated easy enthusiasms but also fears. The narrative that has developed sees in the development of AI more a potentially dystopian machine-ruled future than a tool potentially capable to improve the weel being of humanity. Indeed, some AI technologies hold the potential to transform our society in a disruptive way. That possibility must be kept in check if we want to avoid potentially serious problems. Just think of video deep fakes, but also of the possibility of advanced…

In the business world, goods are delivered based on technical and commercial specifications. In the standards world, there are good reasons why the goods (the standards) of a Standards Developing Organisation (SDO) are not delivered according to commercial requirements normally accepted in the business world. However, this is not a good reason for an SDO to stay with commercial requirements called “patent declarations” that simply bind the originators to license their SEPs at so-called Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms.…

As reported in a previous post, MPAI is busy finalising the “Use Cases and Functional Requirements” document of MPAI-MMC V2. One use case is Avatar-Based Videoconference (ABV), part of the Mixed-reality Collaborative Space (MCS) project supporting scenarios where geographically separated humans represented by avatars collaborate in virtual-reality spaces. ABV refers to a virtual videoconference room equipped with a table and an appropriate number of chairs to be occupied by: Speaking virtual twins representing human participants displayed as the upper part…

 Geneva, Switzerland – 20 April 2022. Today the international, non-profit, unaffiliated Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence (MPAI) standards developing organisation has concluded its 19th General Assembly. Among the outcomes is the publication of the working draft of the Use Cases and Functional Requirements of the planned Version 2 of the Multimodal Conversation (MPAI-MMC) standard. The MPAI process envisages that a standard be developed based on a Call for Technologies referring to two documents Functional Requirements and…

Video coding has been one of the first standardisation areas addressed by MPAI (the first was Content-based Enhanced Audio Coding or MPAI-CAE). One MPAI Video Coding area is focused on the use of AI tools to improve the classic block-based hybrid coding framework and offer more efficient video compression solutions. This was motivated by the rough estimate that MPAI did from its survey on published AI-based video coding results leading to a potential improvement of up to 30%. Figure 1…