I think you're really stretching the definition of deterministic here. For example, switching training order of images has a known impact on outputs, but I don

I think you're really stretching the definition of deterministic here. For example, switching training order of images has a known impact on outputs, but I don't see the equivalent in traditional compression. I agree with you that it is computer code that runs on circuits (and is therefore deterministic in a very loose sense), but it is fundamentally incorrect to compare it to traditional image compression.