A method for lossy image or video encoding, transmission and decoding, the method comprising the steps of: receiving an input image at a first computer system; encoding the input image using a first trained neural network to produce a latent representation; identifying one or more regions of the input image associated with high visual sensitivity; encoding the one or more regions of the input image associated with high visual sensitivity using a second trained neural network to produce one or more region latent representations; performing a quantization process on the latent representation and the one or more region latent representations; transmitting the result of the quantization process to a second computer system; decoding the result of the quantization process to produce an output image, wherein the output image is an approximation of the input image.