Artificial intelligence is transforming our interaction with documents rapidly. AI holds incalculable potential – from data extraction automation to improving review systems. Nonetheless, this potential hinges critically on the quality of the input documents.

Like the first Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems struggled to read poorly scanned documents, AI can be misled by unstructured and unhelpful data. A relationship between AI and document management is necessary to discover the power of AI in document processing.

We need to move beyond our AI tools simply recognizing text. Perhaps we should delve deeper into the orbit of semantic understanding. Still, what do we need to create smart documents, and how do we use them to train AI? Let’s review how AI support can lead to more intelligent content creation with the bonus of integrated accessibility.

Empowering Creators With AI Assistants

Imagine intelligent writing support that smoothly participates in your workflow, behaving as more than an advanced thesaurus or grammar checker. Such AI-powered partners could become true contributors to our content development and help draft content optimized for AI consumption. This future envisions AI assistants that can:

Identify Elements

AI can automatically recognize and classify crucial elements within a document. This includes quotes, references, tables, and mathematical equations. It can then embed these elements with the proper structure, for example MathML for equations, to prevent misinterpreting it as plain text.

Enhance Accessibility

Meaningful alternate text descriptions for images and headings that are naturally arranged become commonplace. This benefits human readers with disabilities while allowing AI systems to grasp the content with more precise accuracy.

Preserve Intent

AI can go beyond simply recognizing formatting. It can analyze the context to understand the purpose of formatting choices. For instance, it recognizes the difference between bold text for emphasis and bold font to define a term.

AI writing partners may enable creators to craft documents that are clear and concise, as well as rich in vocabulary. These documents can become information containers, so to speak, ready for accurate interpretation by AI systems. Meanwhile, the reader still receives value, and accurate, useful data.

This would enhance the possibilities of what AI can achieve while consistently adding human-generated content to the data sources that train the AI.

The Art of Consumption

On the flip side, AI systems must be equipped to handle the embedded information within documents. This compels a shift from basic OCR to a more sophisticated approach.

AI must leverage smart parsers that can understand various formats, instead of treating documents as jumbled text. These parsers can extract the words and the embedded data and meaning, to deliver a complete picture for analysis. AI shouldn't be phased by a wall of text. To improve AI’s grasp of content purpose and context, parsing tools must recognize elements like ARIA roles and document metadata.

By using robust PDF parsers and understanding the structure of documents, AI can move beyond words like mere pixels.

Should Tagged PDF Be The New Standard?

Many experts are weighing the pros and cons of using Tagged PDF when using AI assistants. Tungsten Automation Power PDF already includes Tagged PDF functionality for accessibility purposes. Tagged PDF stands out for the following reasons:

• Rich Semantics: Tagged PDF allows inserting meaning and context directly into the document itself. This eliminates the need for AI to assume the structure of the content.
• Accessibility Champion: Features like Tagged PDF benefit human users with disabilities and AI systems seeking to understand the content. It fosters an inclusive document processing ecosystem.
• Preserving Provenance: You can embed information such as digital signatures and creation data into Tagged PDFs. This functionality ensures trust and authenticity—allowing AI to process documents with more confidence.

Tagged PDF can connect human creators and AI users. We can create accurate and reliable document processing by using a format to prioritize human and machine readability.

Human-AI Symbiosis

The future of AI and documents is not about blindly trusting in AI abilities—it's about creating an association between AI and document management. By creating well-structured documents and equipping AI with the tools to understand them, we can unlock a new era of intelligent document processing. Try Power PDF and start improving your document structure.

A reciprocal relationship can pave the way for more reliable AI applications — think automated data extraction and intelligent document review. Intelligent document creation will result in smarter AI.