> But given we're talking exabytes of data, for this era, the author rightly articulates why AVIF should win.

I'm not sure this is the right conclusion to draw...

1) The author's pain point (use case) is hardware pricing - presuming that goes down (as either AI demands drops/and or production increases), this does not speak to a demand for size, instead, it is about doing more with less...

2) I'm not certain that the exabytes of demand (assuming it comes) will be from AVIF. Rather, if data is important, I think the demand will be a different format entirely (archives, for instance). Demand for more (quality) data might paradoxically call for less compression and less cpu-intensive qualities - uncompressed, raw data, for instance. If is faster and cheaper than bothering with complex algorithms, then simpler formats should be more prevalent.

Building on 1 and 2, a more capable image format, like JPEG-XL, becomes a more logical choice, not the one that can compress the best or is the smallest (in an exa-byte-as-the-norm world).