Finding Fact in Fantasy: Predictions on AI

At the recent Wide-format Summit, I was challenged to assemble a panel of wide-format owners and top-level managers who are actively using artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations. When I reached out to attendees in advance of the event, seeking to identify forward thinking panelists, I learned that not one company – among a group of tech-savvy, growth-minded producers – was currently using it in a meaningful way (or were not willing to talk about it). The panel became a presentation.

Instead, I tapped industry thought leaders and explored data points that help provide a view of how AI will be used in the wide-format segment. Here are a few thoughts.

Real Versus Unreal

The reliability of AI will be essential. In truth, we know when we’ve entered a world when the term “hallucination-free” becomes as a selling point. Whether producers are using generative AI to produce or edit images or create marketing copy, or using predictive AI to make sense of the volumes of data that can be provided by digital printing equipment, they want and need the resulting product to be accurate. While it may be tempting to let AI do the hard work for us, it may be dangerous to assume that all results are correct. This reality brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s famous quote, “Trust but verify.”

Beyond the Age of Novelty

To gain a strong, realistic view of what AI can do, it is important to look beyond the novelty approaches we see so much of in this, the technology’s nascent period. Beyond the often over the top – and sometimes perplexing – results of, for instance, generative AI-produced images that scream, “I’m AI!,” we can also find uses of AI that are thoughtfully, even tastefully generated. We may not even know what was actually generated. The true, long-term value of AI may be in quickly parsing through levels of data that, to you and me, may be overwhelming, even confusing. In production, it will be the ability to see defects or color deficiencies well before our eyes (and take corrective action).

How We Will Be Changed

There is little doubt that AI’s changes to our world – for both good and bad – will be profound. In this issue, Gary Schellerer of ER2 Image Group, said, “It will do to business what the Internet did to business.” But it’s new. In reality, we are only in the “dial-up modem” phase of AI development. For the changes we can envision today, the next decade will hold technological benefits and societal impacts we have yet to imagine. But the writing is on the wall: PRINTING United Alliance’s recent State of the Industry Report emphatically states: “No company in our industry – no matter how successful or established – will be exempt from the revolution.”

How AI Will Fit Our Industry

For those who look at the possibilities of AI and see its benefits, but wonder exactly how it will be integrated into wide-format workflow, production, sales, and management models, help is on the way. In most cases, I believe the implementation of AI will come from those companies that currently produce our printing, finishing equipment, and production software solutions (or the companies that ultimately replace them). For OEMs and developers, doing so will be a part of staying competitive. For PSPs, the benefits that become available will become commonplace. Using AI will not be a choice: it will simply be a part of doing business.

Listening Through the Noise

For the wide-format segment, as for virtually every other industry, the profound effects of AI, as a tool to help us do what we do better, are hazy at best. We see vague shapes, but little detail. But like a program that can be used to generatively increase the resolution of low-quality images, bringing crisp detail to what was once fuzzy, AI will prove itself useful. Until that time, the task at hand is to listen, stay curious, and thoughtfully implement it when AI becomes the right tool to use.