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Artificial intelligence (AI) is already causing huge shifts in several industries, and print is no exception; we can expect a big impact in 2025 if print service providers adopt AI technologies at the rate they’ve indicated they will . That said, while AI promises major opportunities to increase efficiency and work smarter, it also comes with risks. This is why I recommend every organization implement an AI policy.    What is an AI policy? An AI policy is an internal document designed to provide guidelines — and guardrails — to employees about your organization’s use of artificial intelligence. It can be used to communicate your stance on AI, your expectations regarding how company and customer data should be handled within AI tools, and any responsibilities employees have when using AI tools at the organization. Some companies choose to post their AI policies publicly, as well, in which case the policy can be seen as an external communication meant to inform customers about the …

The Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) is a venue for the USPS to share technical information with mailers and receive advice and recommendations concerning mail-related products and services, in an effort to enhance customer value and expand the use of USPS products and services. Meetings are hosted once per quarter and offer an opportunity for mailers to directly interact with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) executive leadership team on new and existing programs. Here, Canon production inkjet customers and thINK members Eric Hollingsworth (Vice President of Operations, RevSpring), Scott Williams (General Manager of Operations, Impact), and Dina Kessler (President, Kessler Creative) share a recap from the January 14–15, 2025 MTAC meeting with the thINK community. MTAC Restructure The latest MTAC kicked off on Tuesday, January 14 at 1pm with the announcement of a new MTAC structure that is in effect as of January 2025. In the past, Tuesday’s session was open to people in the …

When I was a young Applications Analyst for Linotype on Long Island, I was flabbergasted by the number of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) that had developed around PostScript and prepress. (Pre-press was still hyphenated at the time, which gives you an idea of how long ago this was.) For fun, I created a three-letter acronym generator with the help of some of my work colleagues. If memory serves, we used FileMaker Pro to make it. We selected three sets of words to choose from. All you had to do was press a button and a new acronym would automatically appear, picked randomly from those sets of words. Even though they were randomly chosen and often nonsensical, sometimes they seemed eerily similar to the ones we used every day in our work. Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation This TLA memory came back to me not long ago when I was working on a white paper about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the growth of robotic process automation (RPA). It seemed like …

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to change the print industry is huge. We’ve been promised a revolution in the way we work, from increased efficiency and automation to more insightful data analysis and more actionable business insights. But the promise of AI has not yet been fully realized; while adoption is quickly growing, a September 2024 PRINTING United Alliance and NAPCO Research survey found that just 62.4% of respondents were either using AI or planning to within the next year. 1 Print service providers are highly motivated to capitalize on the possibilities offered by AI. Many PSPs report big challenges going into 2025 including increased operating costs, decreased sales, and continuing labor shortages. Of course, implementing AI solutions can be a hurdle in and of itself; with a technology as broad and wide-ranging as AI (and with practically every software and platform out there claiming to have AI tools and features), where should PSPs focus today to get the …