# Perceptual Image Codec: What Matters in Practical Learned Image Compression

> Source: <https://apple.github.io/ml-pico/>
> Published: 2026-05-24 12:01:24+00:00

[About](index.html#about)

We introduce PICO (Perceptual Image Codec) — the first learned codec that is both practical, and optimized directly for the human visual system. To derive it, we perform a comprehensive study of modeling choices for practical learned codecs, and search over millions of model configurations to jointly optimize over perceptual quality and on-device runtime.

Based on large-scale subjective user studies, PICO provides **2.3-3× bitrate savings** against AV1, AV2, VVC, ECM and JPEG-AI, and **20-40% bitrate savings** against the best learned codec alternatives. At the same time, on an iPhone 17 Pro Max, it encodes 12MP images as fast as **230ms**, and decodes them in **150ms** — faster than most top ML-based codecs run on a V100 GPU. Different from most learned codecs, PICO furthermore comes with cross-platform robustness guarantees.

Comparisons of state-of-the-art traditional and learned codecs across different considerations of practicality.