Yes, it can be used for image compression:

https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/image-compression-wi...

Here's the paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05148

(No connection to the authors, just found it super cool when I read it a few months back.)

Any and every machine learning algorithm can be used for compression. Most ConvNet shit cannot be run in true real time in any way shape or form even with GPU: latencies are on the order of 500ms-1sec, so noticeable even if you have more datacenters than God, like Google does.