Geneva, Switzerland – 23 November 2022. Today the international, non-profit, unaffiliated Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence (MPAI) standards developing organisation has concluded its 26th General Assembly (MPAI-26). MPAI is calling for new members to support the development of its work program. Planned for approval in the first months of 2023 are 5 standards and 1 technical report: AI Framework (MPAI-AIF). Standard for a secure AIF environment executing AI Workflows (AIW) composed of AI Modules (AIM). Avatar…

…and that is the number that separates us from the pre-digital age. Why should the 6th of November 1992 be the beginning of the digital age?? Well, because 30 years ago, this very day, MPEG approved its first – MPEG-1 – standard. I am sure that some of you would want to disagree, not with the anniversary, but with its significance. So let me insist and say that MPEG-1 is the dividing line between the digital age and whatever age…

…the first MPEG meeting was held in Ottawa, hosted by the Department of Commerce (Andy Kwon). It was the implementation of a plan that I had presented to Hiroshi Yasuda (NTT Laboratories), then the Convenor of ISO TC 97/SC 2/WG 8 at the WG 8 meeting 10 months before. It was the time when the proposal of the ESPRIT PICA project had been adopted as the starting point of what eventually became the JPEG standard. The development of requirements and…

I draw the reader’s attention to the fact that the title uses a definite and an indefinite article. Yes, because there is a big difference between _a_ Metaverse and _the_ Metaverse. _A_ Metaverse implies that there are many instances of the thing, _the_ Metaverse means that there is one instance. If I take the definition of metaverse provided by the recode article "Why you should care about Facebook’s big push into the metaverse", metaverse is “a virtual world where people…