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Artificial intelligence revolutionizes the print industry: From personalization to efficiency

If you happened to be on Johnnie Walker Princes Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, in August 2024, you could have co-designed—with the help of their artificial intelligence (AI) solution—a stunning, one-of-a-kind label for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label in a matter of minutes. That may be considered a fun sales gimmick by some, but this type of product personalization—in store or online—to drive sales is only one way that AI is revolutionizing the print industry.

At the core, the strength of AI for business is its ability to gather large amounts of data, analyze it and turn that into better decision-making and higher profits. Elimination of waste, boosting efficiency, attracting young talent—AI plays a role in all these important challenges. In sales, AI can segment customers based on demographics, purchasing behaviour and more to better target them in print campaigns. AI can also help ensure the right message reaches the right audience by testing text and images to find the most engaging combinations, notes A.J. Rai, VP of sales at Mitchell Press in Burnaby, B.C.

HP is using AI capabilities such as natural language processing (the ability to interact in human language), contextual awareness and inferencing. Mary Fish, senior VP of HP print software platform and solutions, explains that “these capabilities allow us to understand customers’ printing habits and preferences, make inferences on how they want to print, and provide input in a more intuitive and conversational manner.”

The company’s immediate goal with AI is to make printing simpler and frictionless by providing easy set-up, consistently perfect prints and predictive and proactive support.

“Currently, printers only print what we tell them to, which can lead to frustrating trial and error for customers to achieve their desired output,” says Fish. “With our Print AI software solution, we’re flipping the script. By harnessing the power of AI models derived from HP’s deep knowledge base, we are making our printers smarter and more intuitive.”

HP and other printer companies doing similar things are therefore moving printers from inert tools to partners in the process—as HP notes, with more automation and improved customization options “to deliver the perfect print, every time. ”

Therefore, as Fish explains, AI creates more value for printing company customers, but in addition, “it also creates a fresh wave of engagement possibilities within their own channels. By introducing innovative AI capabilities, they can showcase the cutting-edge software solutions from HP, generating excitement and interest among their customers. This presents an opportunity to offer value-added services and solutions that cater to the evolving needs of customers of all sizes.”

AI can also help reduce environmental impact by optimizing print settings, thereby reducing paper use and ink waste.

Jason Foubert, general manager at Marquis Book Printing in Toronto, adds that AI-based technology is already being used to improve the accuracy of asset maintenance and to help detect changes in operation that could cause downtime.

Scheduling and meetings

Foubert invites us to imagine integrating a scheduling system with production asset data collection software.

“AI learns from actual run speeds, make-ready times and ramp-up data for each job on every asset required to manufacture a custom product,” he says. “It then uses this data to predict time required to complete all future jobs with similar specifications, create run batching efficiencies and improve on-time delivery simply because the planned schedule is no longer based on assumptions. The old ‘static’ assumptions used for planning become dynamic and change based on current specific operator capabilities and asset ‘health.’ This is just one of an infinite number of ways AI could improve our businesses and industry.” The Marquis team is also testing an AI meeting assistant to transcribe, create a summary of key points and identify action and follow-up items.

Artificial intelligence can gather large amounts of data and analyze them so that companies can take better decisions to reap higher profits. Photo courtesy Significans Automation

Improving workflow speeds

AI is also starting to be used in the print industry to automate mundane print and packaging tasks, freeing employees to handle only situations that need human problem-solving.

“For example, we’ve been doing a lot of analysis of the state of incoming customer files and how AI can standardize them into the format that’s needed to proceed to fill the order,” explains Marc Raad, president and founder of Significans Automation, a Toronto-based company providing customized workflow automation and integration that also utilizes AI applications. “Generally speaking, about 70 to 80 per cent of files can now be handled by AI.”

Raad notes that about 90 per cent of the North American print industry hasn’t started using AI (it’s higher in Canada), but he adds that “companies are thirsty for automation” because of its capacity to make production and other key processes faster and more efficient, taking pressure off staff.

In a workflow context, Raad explains that printing companies (after an initial assessment) might install sophisticated AI-empowered software solutions to solve specific problems. He also also adds that about half of his clients already have software with some AI elements that is underutilized. Either way, much greater efficiency and simplification is the goal.

Indeed, Raad has had customers with dozens of workflows for different products and through a detailed analysis, he and his team have reduced that to just a few to handle everything with higher efficiency and fewer errors. Raad’s team has also used AI for automation of prepress checks, layout optimization, and faster processing of large volumes of data.

On the shop floor, AI can be used to reduce errors, enhance production efficiency, help manage inventory and improve estimation, among other things.

Project Halo was a consumer experience campaign spearheaded by alcohol manufacturer Diageo in partnership with Phantom, Amazon AWS, GMG, Roland DG, and Hybrid Software. Visitors to the Johnnie Walker Princes Street in Edinburgh, U.K., had the opportunity to co-design their own bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label with the help of generative AI. photo courtesy Hybrid Software

“To maximize its benefits, we need to capture the most data possible,” Raad explains. “AI use is still in its infancy, but it’s destined to grow in the print industry and I’m excited about the future. I urge shop owners to take that first step of getting an assessment done.”

Workflow aside, Rai has a deeper view of what AI can do for the print industry—nothing short of bringing the industry back to its historic position as an extremely powerful force of communication.

AI’s role in the digital age of print

“Print is a very old industry, and it’s been central to our world for centuries,” he says. “In recent times, print has been behind every conference, every marketing campaign, it provided so many solutions [for] all those years. What made it what it is today is that it was intertwined with other industries, with the whole world. It was a strength in achieving goals. Then the digital era arrived, and it came so fast.”

In Rai’s view, it’s past time for print to regroup and reimagine its role in this new era, taking back its highly integrated position—and the key is AI.

“The way I want to see AI used is to intertwine printing again with the rest of the world,” he says. “There are a handful of printers already doing that, including us. We have rebranded as a marketing company. We still call ourselves a printer, but we are a visual communication solution. We do deep analysis using AI for our customers and then we help them reach their goals, with our printing division, our binding division, our website development arm (Project 28) and our other services. We are not just a company that provides printed materials for our customers, as printing companies have been doing for many years, but a partner in their success.”

So, while firms like Mitchell Press are still producing traditional printed products, with the data AI collects, these products are targeted to ensure clients reach their goals. If a goal is better employee retainment and engagement for example, AI could extract preferences to a single employee from a database and co-design custom packaging for a personalized work anniversary gift such as a piece of jewelry or a watch—packaging at the level of memorabilia that serves as a keepsake and point of pride for employees, displayed in their offices.

For the universal goal of sales, AI can help clients identify and overcome barriers.

“IKEA used to send a monthly magazine, and it worked really well to drive sales,” Rai explains, as an example. “Around 2003/2004, they started e-commerce sales, and it went well, but brick-and-mortar sales went down. So they looked at what they could do. They analyzed their customers’ buying patterns to see who was leaving their e-shopping carts full without completing the purchase and why. Understanding that these potential customers or past customers lived too far away for delivery, they sent out an email blast to them based on the data obtained with a unique URL. The online browsing might show, for example, a customer looking at beds. So, your AI system automatically generates a unique postcard based on that shopping pattern, which is mailed to the customer, offering a huge discount off a bed or even a free bed, which makes it worthwhile for the customer to drive all that way. Plus, the customer could buy other things.”

Rai adds that AI can also enable putting data metrics around investments in printing and other marketing avenues, placing an ROI on individual printed items so to speak, in terms of repeat sales, new sales through word of mouth or recommendations online.

“Let’s use AI to intertwine printing with everything again,” he says. “Let’s use it in sales. Let’s use it to build customer loyalty and employee retention. Why can’t bank statements be personalized? In manufacturing, we can do variable printed packaging right in the plant. We can use AI to do new product renderings and display them in printed store displays even though the manufacturing of that product hasn’t happened yet. But by the time it’s being manufactured, the orders are already there. It enables you to sell this product at a high volume right away instead of having the typical lag time. You can go to market a year earlier. There are so many possibilities.”

Indeed AI offers PSPs several possibilities.

This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2024 issue of PrintAction.