The present disclosure provides systems and methods that enable adaptive training of a channel coding model including an encoder model, a channel model positioned structurally after the encoder model, and a decoder model positioned structurally after the channel model. The channel model can have been trained to emulate a communication channel, for example, by training the channel model on example data that has been transmitted via the communication channel. The channel coding model can be trained on a loss function that describes a difference between input data input into the encoder model and output data received from the decoder model. In particular, such a loss function can be backpropagated through the decoder model while modifying the decoder model, backpropagated through the channel model while the channel model is held constant, and then backpropagated through the encoder model while modifying the encoder model.