The evolution of OCR software: From the telegraph to AI

May 25, 2022 by Automation Hero

OCR is no longer the star automation technology, but it plays a major role in AI. Here’s how

Optical character recognition (OCR), is one of the earliest forms of automation. It’s technology that converts images of text (such as document scans and PDFs) into machine-readable and editable text.

Most people are only familiar with OCR because they work in an office that uses it. Even consumers unknowingly benefit from the technology when they’re able to copy and paste text from PDFs or other images without having to retype it. OCR is especially helpful for streamlining data entry, because it can digitize information from paper documents for insertion into databases.

For much of its history in the modern office, OCR has come in a standalone software or tool that users deploy on specific documents. More recently, OCR has become an integrated feature in a new generation of comprehensive, automation platforms powered by artificial intelligence, where users probably aren’t even aware of OCR as they benefit from its capabilities. Still, developers continue to improve the base technology, even if it’s no longer the star of the show. And these improvements are key to advancing what AI is capable of now and in the future.

How did it evolve to this point?

The origin of OCR software

Just before World War I, a physicist named Emanuel Goldberg built a machine that could read printed text and convert it into telegraph code. Its use expanded in the late 1920s, when businesses began to microfilm financial records to maximize storage space. The technique made it challenging to retrieve records efficiently. Goldberg created a photoelectric microfilm selector that could read patterns from film projectors, allowing recordkeepers to quickly locate specific documents. This later became a patented statistical machine acquired by IBM.

In the 1970s, Ray Kurzweil invented what he called omni-font OCR that was able to process printed text in almost any font. At the turn of the millennium, this technology officially joined the digital revolution as a cloud-based service that could integrate with other office productivity tools.

How OCR software works now

Though OCR isn’t 100% accurate, it’s no longer dependent on exact matches to specific fonts, and often achieves comparable or greater text conversion accuracy rates than manual data entry.

In the past, text in images had to be black on a crisp white background. Now OCR software can recognize colored fonts or identify text on more complex backgrounds, such as flyers or stylized invoices. Even better, scans no longer have to be completely perfect for accurate processing. AI can help OCR recognize characters even if they’re misaligned or low resolution. Advanced AI models are even helping OCR read human handwriting, including some cursive.

OCR software as a tool for intelligent automation 

OCR is no longer just a standalone software program, but one of many tools that intelligent process automation platforms have at their disposal. Powered by the latest advancements in AI, intelligent process automation platforms provide complete end-to-end document processing capabilities and even integrate with other point solutions to create more cohesive workflows. OCR often works in the background of these systems without any human input, automatically converting scanned documents into machine-readable text.

AI enables one of the most powerful features of intelligent automation: data extraction. Now, OCR no longer has to convert images into machine-readable text for users to work with it. AI can actually scan documents and recognize different types of information, allowing users to extract only what they need. After users upload invoices, for example, they query the system for all invoices from a specific customer or those that have transaction amounts in a certain range, and the AI will pull them up.

Or, AI can automatically identify and pull the elements the user asks for from groups of customer emails, saving the need to read through potentially thousands. If the user needs to enter specific information into a database (such as customer names and account numbers), the AI can use natural language processing to pull those details from scanned documents or emails and enter them into the database automatically.
In the era of intelligent automation, users are no longer limited to OCR software when it comes to document processing. Automation Hero is an advanced intelligent process automation platform that can read documents similar to the way humans do and streamline data extraction to prepare it for further processing. As AI models become more advanced, they also help OCR convert text with even greater accuracy for more powerful data entry. Get in touch today to schedule a call with one of our experts or schedule a product demo.