Former MPEG head Leonardo Chiariglione has launched a new standards body, Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence (MPAI). The group is planned to be established as a non-profit organisation by the end of September 2020 and will develop technical specifications for data coding, especially using Artificial Intelligence, and their integration in Information and Communication Technology systems. The group aims to bridgethe gap between its technical specifications and their practical use through Intellectual Property Rights Guidelines, such as Framework Licences.
The MPAI has announced that one use case – Context-based Audio Enhancement (MPAI-CAE) – has reached sufficient maturity to warrant the start of the next stage where detailed functional requirements are identified.
MPAI-CAE addresses a variety of consumer-oriented use cases, e.g. entertainment, voice com-munication, audio conferencing, gaming etc. relevant to different contexts – e.g., at home, in the car and on the go – that may greatly influence the audio experience. MPAI-CAE also addresses professional applications such as audio (post-)production and restoration.
The MPAI-CAE standard will specify:
1. Input and output interfaces for a set of contexts
- Interfaces of updatable and extensible processing modules, both traditional and AI-based, to create processing pipelines for possibly partly local and partly on-the-cloud execution
- Interfaces of the processed audio signals to a variety of delivery protocols.
MPAI envisages that technology providers will benefit from a wider usage of their technologies beyond their specific domains; application vendors adopting the emerging MPAI-CAE standard will be able to tap from the common set of technologies to support their specific needs; service providers will benefit from an accelerated delivery by being able to third parties’ components from both a technical and licensing perspective; and end users will be able to tap from a competitive market providing constantly improved user experiences and AI-based audio endpoints.
MPAI is investigating several other draft projects that are expected to become standard development projects as they mature.
Any entity, such as corporation and individual firm, partnership, university, governmental body or international organisation supporting the mission of MPAI may apply for membership, provided that it is able to contribute to the development of technical specifications for the efficient use of data.
Visit http://mpai.community/ for MPAI and http://mpai.community/2020/09/12/mpai-cae/ for more details on MPAI-CAE.