by Jyrki Alakuijala, Zoltán Szabadka & Luca Versari, Paradigms of Intelligence, Google Technology & Society Building the Next Generation Image Standard The internet runs on images. Since the early days of the web, there has been a relentless tension between visual fidelity and bandwidth. For decades, the industry relied on the venerable JPEG standard for images loading fast. It served us remarkably well, but as displays moved to High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (WCG), the format began to show its limits. The road to JPEG XL ( JXL ) wasn't a straight line. It was a decade-long exploration, creating a series of milestone projects testing radical ideas in psychovisual modeling, entropy coding, and optimization. Today, as JPEG XL sees rapid adoption across operating systems and professional standards, we’re looking back at the experiments that made it possible. The Early Foundation: 2011–2017 Our study began with a focus on understanding the limits of existing technology.…