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<p>At InterDigital, the research we lead drives innovation and standards impact. Among our patented technologies and solutions, we develop and license the building blocks for video compression standards that have become ubiquitous in our daily lives because they are deployed in nearly all video-capable consumer devices.</p>
<p>For fifty years, InterDigital has consistently developed cutting-edge technologies. Today, as we center AI as an important part of our research and innovation, we have partnered with Silo AI, the largest private AI lab from the Nordics, to build a software framework to test AI-based video compression technologies developed by InterDigital&rsquo;s Labs.</p>
<p>Silo AI worked with InterDigital to develop the <em>CompressAI-Vision</em> program suite, a software for image- and video-compression scientists to test, evaluate and train AI-based compression methods. Video Compression for Machines (VCM) research requires the management of large image and video datasets and the building of complex evaluation pipelines.</p>
<p>We firmly believe in the broad benefit of cross-company and industry collaboration, ensuring a continuously evolving ecosystem where companies can benefit from each other while smaller players have the opportunity to contribute. For this reason, <em>CompressAI-Vision</em> was recently released as an <a href="https://github.com/InterDigitalInc/CompressAI-Vision">OpenSource Software</a>, with positive feedback thus far. The tool frees the capacity of video researchers for other, more complicated tasks. Our commitment to industry collaboration, augmented by our research heritage and Silo AI&rsquo;s leading AI expertise, has resulted in an innovative computer vision tool beneficial for the whole industry. </p>
<p>Jaideep Chandrashekar, Senior Director, Head of Emerging Technologies Lab at InterDigital, said:</p>
<p><span style="color: #00aeef;"><strong><strong><em>"Silo AI's engineers worked very closely with InterDigital&rsquo;s Emerging Technology Lab to translate research ideas into tools that take advantage of cutting-edge AI technologies, helping us deliver the CompressAI-Vision on time." </em></strong></strong></span></p>
<p>The AI-based compression methods have recently demonstrated their superiority to traditional image compression methods like JPEG and state-of-the-art video compression codecs used in still picture modes, such as H.265/HEVC. While usually designed for content to be viewed by human eyes, visual compression methods can also be optimized for computer vision tasks, such as object detection and segmentation from images. However, the evaluation pipelines in that context can become quite complex. Typically, in addition to compression and decompression, they include pre- and post-processing steps such as cropping, rescaling, framerate adaptation, and more. The final decoded content is then passed through a neural network-based detection algorithm. The performance of the whole pipeline must be assessed with standard evaluation protocols, while the evaluation must be done using several image and video datasets, each including thousands of pictures and up to hundreds of video clips. Calculations are typically done in parallel at large GPU clusters.</p>
<p><em>CompressAI-Vision</em> is a tool that facilitates the construction of evaluation pipelines, the evaluation of custom image compression models, and the management of large image and video datasets.</p>
<p>Peter Sarlin, CEO &amp; Co-founder at Silo AI, says:</p>
<p><span style="color: #652e8e;"><strong><strong><em>"The work with InterDigital is an excellent example of putting AI at the core of a digital platform. The AI-based tool we&rsquo;ve built enables more efficient use of advanced technologies, making it well-aligned with our vision of building human-centric AI that frees researchers to do meaningful work." </em></strong></strong></span></p>
<p><strong>More about Silo AI:</strong></p>
<p>Silo AI is one of Europe&rsquo;s largest private AI labs &ndash; a trusted AI partner that brings competitive advantage to product R&amp;D. We build AI-driven solutions and products to enable smart devices, autonomous vehicles, industry 4.0, and smart cities. Silo AI provides its customers a unique access to world-class AI expertise, as well as the Silo OS infrastructure to speed up AI development and deployment. Established in 2017, Silo AI is on a mission to build a European flagship AI company, with offices currently in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland.</p>