Dynamic control for a machine learning autoencoder

Abstract

An autoencoder is configured to encode content at different quality levels. The autoencoder includes an encoding system and a decoding system with neural network layers forming an encoder network and a decoder network. The encoder network and decoder network are configured to include branching paths through the networks that include different subnetworks. During deployment, content is provided to the encoding system with a quality signal indicating a quality at which the content can be reconstructed. The quality signal determines which of the paths through the encoder network are activated for encoding the content into one or more tensors, which are compressed into a bitstream and later used by the decoding system to reconstruct the content. The autoencoder is trained by randomly or systematically selecting different combinations of tensors to use to encode content and backpropagating error values from loss functions through the network paths associated with the selected tensors.