I would say any compression is abstraction in a certain sense. A simple example is a gradient. A lossy compression might abstract over the precise pixel value a

I would say any compression is abstraction in a certain sense. A simple example is a gradient. A lossy compression might abstract over the precise pixel value and simply records a gradiant that almost matches the raw input. You could even make the argument that lossless compressions is abstraction. A 2D grid with 5px lines and 50px spacing between them could feasibly be captured really well using a classical compression scheme. What AI offers is just a more powerful and opaque way of doing the same thing.