HP has announced two new AI features that will be integrated on select members of its printer lineup, continuing the firm's effort to rejuvenate the legacy tech with generative AI.
The company set its sights on bringing AI to the world of printing last year and it has unveiled recent strides on this front at its Amplify conference in Nashville.
First up is 'Scan to Email', which will leverage generative AI to modernize what has become an antiquated and tedious process that has plagued businesses of all sizes since its inception.
The feature will be available on all LaserJet Pro MFP 3000 and 4000 series printers.
This will use optical character recognition (OCR) in combination with LLMs to create relevant titles, subject lines, content summaries, and searchable metadata for scanned documents users want to share via email.
The infamous 'scan.pdf' files generated by traditional scanners are almost indistinguishable from one another, and when trying to share multiple documents this can quickly lead to confusion and slow down administrative workflows.
Speaking on stage at the Amplify conference, Anneliese Olson, president of imaging, printing, and solutions at HP, said simplified printing is a priority for the company, and AI enhancements like this are part of this journey towards making printing a more seamless part of their workflow.
"Simplifying print... This is the number one request that we get from customers, 'please make it easier', because printing should actually fit more seamlessly into how we do things."
For businesses that often have to scan documents that contain sensitive information, HP is introducing 'Guided Redaction', which promises to automatically redact personally identifiable information (PII) as it is being scanned.
Users can select from a list of the specific types of PII they want to redact, from social security numbers to addresses, and leveraging OCR the printer or multifunctional will delete the pixels, ensuring the redaction is not reversible.
Unlike HP's scan to email feature, this redaction takes place on the printer itself, leveraging compute from an additional card they can equip their LaserJet Enterprise Flow series printer (models 500 – 800).
This ensures none of the sensitive data ever leaves the printer, and is the latest example of how HP is looking to bring AI enhancements beyond its PC line-up and build out a portfolio of devices that can take advantage of LLMs at the edge.
During his opening keynote, HP chief executive Enrique Lores laid out the company's vision to deliver AI at the edge across a range of devices in its portfolio and help customers take advantage of the benefits local AI compute can bring.
"We are focused on bringing AI to the edge and making sure that our customers can run AI models on their PCs [and] on the rest of the portfolio to get the advantages of those: lower cost, higher privacy and security, and faster [latency]."
