Very cool! if anyone who comes across this particular thread knows about papers/research being written about this topic, I'd be very interested to learn more.
Also there is a free book that contains descriptions of various common and exotic compression formats http://www.mattmahoney.net/dc/dce.html
Overall I think we are yet to see the full potential of deep learning unleashed on data compression. For example the neural network in cmix compressor is quite primitive compared to modern architectures. Someone will certainly find a way to do better than that!