AI Glossary Term
What does “OCR (Optical Character Recognition)” mean?
Definition
Technology that converts text in images or scans into machine-readable text.
How OCR (Optical Character Recognition) works
Example
A phone app scans a paper receipt and turns the printed lines into text, so the total and date can be filled into an expense report automatically.
Why it matters
OCR makes paper and image-based documents searchable and editable. Errors on poor scans mean extracted numbers should still be checked.
Common questions
Does OCR read handwriting?
Modern systems can, with lower accuracy than for printed text, especially for messy writing.
What affects OCR accuracy?
Image quality, lighting, fonts, language, and layout complexity.
Is OCR AI?
Modern OCR typically uses neural networks, though older versions relied on template matching.