A method for text compression comprises recognizing a prefix string of one or more text characters preceding a target string of a plurality of text characters to be compressed. The prefix string is provided to a natural language generation (NLG) model configured to output one or more predicted continuations each having an associated rank. If the one or more predicted continuations include a matching predicted continuation relative to the next one or more text characters of the target string, the next one or more text characters are compressed as an NLG-type compressed representation. If no predicted continuations match the next one or more text characters of the target string, a longest matching entry in a compression dictionary is identified. The next one or more text characters of the target string are compressed as a dictionary-type compressed representation that includes the dictionary index value of the longest matching entry.