Lossless data compression by large models

Data compression is a fundamental technology that enables efficient storage and transmission of information. However, traditional compression methods are approaching their theoretical limits after 80 years of research and development. At the same time, large artificial intelligence models have emerged, which, trained on vast amounts of data, are able to ‘understand’ various semantics. Intuitively, semantics conveys the meaning of data concisely, so large models hold the potential to revolutionize compression technology. Here we present LMCompress, a new method that leverages large models to compress data. LMCompress shatters all previous lossless compression records on four media types: text, images, video and audio. It halves the compression rates of JPEG-XL for images, FLAC for audio and H.264 for video, and it achieves nearly one-third of the compression rates of zpaq for text. Our results demonstrate that the better a model understands the data, the more effectively it can compress it, suggesting a deep connection between understanding and compression. Effective lossless compression requires that frequent patterns in the data can be identified. Li et al. explore using deep learning models to more effectively compress text, audio and video data.