Skip to main content
APenNameAndThatA
Participating Frequently
October 31, 2025
Question

Why doesn't OCR use AI?

  • October 31, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 185 views

Hi! Adobe is pushing AI, but why doesn't Adobe use AI to improve the OCR? Like knowing that "Will" is more likely than "Wi11" and "The end of the day" is more likely than "Th eendo fthed ay"? Thanks! (And get it to whiz up some code to default "enable scrolling" on viewing PDF's? Who doesn't like scrolling?

2 replies

Randy Hagan
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 2, 2025

TBH, I would prefer that it didn't.

 

By limited experience with other OCR software that did use AI to help fill in errors, I've discovered that it's rather fallible. I'd rather pick off the obvious errors that appear in Acrobat OCR and correct them as I find them than have to proof for wrong word, but perfectly spelled wrong word choices, in the resulting OCR output. Think of your phone spell-checking your texting entries into sometimes hilarious, sometime tragic, "corrections" on the fly for a relevant example.

 

YMMV, of course. But I don't necessarily think that AI interpretations, much less hallucinations, is the best choice here.

 

Randy

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 2, 2025

I agree AI has a lot of pitfalls, but it should at least be an option... 

Randy Hagan
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 2, 2025

I wouldn't deny it to anyone else, honest.

 

But for me, I'd really appreciate it if there was an off switch. I do a lot of book production work and it'd make my life much more difficult. That's why I say YMMV. there may be workflows where it's an excellent enhancement. It would just cost me heartache.

 

Randy

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 1, 2025

Good question... That's one of the main fields it can actually be useful in.