Document AI works with different types of documents — including structured files such as spreadsheets, semi-structured documents such as invoices, forms and receipts and unstructured files such as contracts, emails and reports — to transform them into actionable data.

This guide covers how document AI works, its benefits and limitations, how it's used across industries and how it works on the Databricks platform.

Document AI uses several different technologies to simulate how a human reads a document. It ingests files, reads characters, interprets layout and language, extracts relevant information and feeds it into business systems. Steps in this pipeline include:

OCR is just one piece of AI pipelines. OCR reads characters, while document AI understands context and meaning.