HP has just announced HP Print AI, which is being touted as the “industry’s first intelligent printing” experience. Apart from pushing two of technology’s favorite letters (AI), the software wants to “simplify and improve printing from setup to support.” There are several tools here, but the most interesting one is something called Perfect Output.
This can usually solve the problem of printing from web pages that output little more than absolute garbage. The company says that the built-in algorithms will reduce all unnecessary free space and get rid of ads.
Image size will also be optimized, so printing from a website should look just as good as something coming from a word processor. HP says everything will “fit perfectly on the page the first time.” Perfect Result isn’t just for websites, as the company says it will also make short work of spreadsheets, another frustrating thing to print.
The feature is rolling out today, but only to select beta customers. HP told Engadget that Perfect Output will work with any of the company’s printers, as long as the correct driver is installed and connected to a Windows 10 or Windows 11 machine. Once some customer feedback comes in, it should go into wider release.
HP Print AI will also use artificial intelligence to personalize support for each user, and the company says its “intelligent technology anticipates the needs of consumers.” HP says this will be especially useful during installation and for remembering user preferences. There’s also a chatbot that enables language-based queries running from a custom LLM, which the company calls a “print language model.” So there’s a technical, ah, PLM.
For now, these tools are related to driver software. HP says they will feature in an upcoming software update slated for next year.
