OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

Technology that converts images of text—scanned documents, photos, PDFs—into machine-readable text. OCR is the foundational layer that enables AI agents to process paper-based and image-based documents. Modern OCR engines handle multiple languages, handwritten text, low-quality scans, and complex layouts (tables, forms, multi-column documents). AI agents in finance, legal, and healthcare use OCR as the first step in document processing pipelines.