[thomastjeffery]

Lossy compression has the same problem it has always had: lossy metadata.

The contextual information surrounding intentional data loss needs to be preserved. Without that context, we become ignorant of the missing data. Worst case, you get replaced numbers. Average case, you get lossy->lossy transcodes, which is why we end up with degraded content.

There are only two places to put that contextual information: metadata and watermarks. Metadata can be written to a file, but there is no guarantee it will be copied with that data. Watermarks fundamentally degrade the content once, and may not be preserved in derivative works.

I wish that the generative model explosion would result in a better culture of metadata preservation. Unfortunately, it looks like the focus is on metadata instead.