How far away is general artificial intelligence from being applicable to the printing industry?

Release Date： 2024-05-21 17:34:26 View Count： 1

On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT emerged onto the scene and achieved hundreds of millions of active users at an unprecedented pace. A year hence, as we stand at the cusp of another year, reviewing the advancements propelled by ChatGPT in the realm of AI-generated content (AIGC) and its exploratory strides within the printing industry bears significant importance. Precisely, AIGC, or Artificial Intelligence Generated Content, denotes the automated creation of various forms of content using AI technologies, encompassing text, images, audio, video, and 3D models. With its capacity to generate vast quantities of content at an efficiency surpassing human capabilities, low cost, and relatively high quality, AIGC applications have rapidly expanded into areas such as digital marketing, brand promotions, product descriptions, automated customer service, translation services, and even music composition.

Since 2023, a proliferation of AIGC tools has emerged both domestically and abroad, beyond ChatGPT, including Baidu's Wenxin Yiyi, Alibaba's Qwen, Midjourney, among others. Of greater interest is the practical implementation of AIGC within the printing sector and the transformations it heralds for printing enterprises.

In the publishing industry, intimately tied to printing, a speaker from a publishing house at the National Print Managers' Conference in 2023 detailed extensive applications of AIGC in their operations, ranging from topic planning, text translation, literature searches, historical data verification, to cover design. In fact, AIGC utilization in publishing is already underway, with leading houses establishing dedicated teams for exploration while regional publishers engage through platform collaborations. Beyond planning and design, AIGC is deeper into manuscript compilation, editing, proofreading, marketing channels, and reader services, with digital humans also taking on roles like hosting, smart shopping guides, and intelligent customer service. Industry analysts predict that AIGC may soon revolutionize content production processes and methodologies in publishing.

In packaging printing, domestic companies have employed AIGC to tackle a multitude of product appearance and structural design tasks, transitioning from manual original artwork to AI-generated materials. This has vastly reduced the design cycle and enhanced overall efficiency. In Japan, specialized design firms are leveraging AIGC to streamline product development and innovation processes, extensively serving sectors like food and pharmaceuticals. Beyond design, AIGC's application scenarios within printing enterprises' operational contexts are also under active exploration. In industrial manufacturing, AIGC technology, when combined with digital twin technologies, accelerates digital transformation, effectively aiding cost reduction and efficiency enhancement while promoting intelligence upgrading.

The onslaught of AIGC prompts introspection: How will design departments operate in the future? How can we leverage new technologies to captivate and secure clients? How can we harness these technologies to innovate services and products? And how might these breakthroughs facilitate overtaking competitors? The era we currently inhabit is one shaped by both historical forces and technological revolutions, presenting immense pressures and challenges alongside vast opportunities. Some predict that 2024 will mark China's AIGC epoch. Printing enterprises that are early adopters and actively embrace AI may carve out a distinct future for themselves.

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