HP Imagine 2024: Embracing an AI Future

By Toni McQuilken

Print samples on display at HP Imagine 2024.

Last week, I was invited to attend HP’s second annual Imagine event in Palo Alto, California. At this event, all the company's divisions are brought together and journalists and analysts from around the world are invited to hear about their innovations and plans for the future. While, given the breadth of HP’s portfolio, the wide-format and industrial print lines aren’t front and center, it is still a fascinating look at the company’s technology philosophy.

One interesting point that quickly stood out this year was how much more unified HP feels as a company. It is a market powerhouse in every category it serves — from computers to home printers to print-for-pay. Still, it has always felt like each of those was operating independently from the rest, and all happened to share the same badge. However, two years into the Imagine conference, it is very clear to see that it is bringing together all of the different lines with a strategy for the future that spans all its products and markets.

Unveiling the Workplace Relationship Index

As part of Imagine 2024, HP unveiled the second annual Workplace Relationship Index (WRI) study, with some interesting trends it was able to highlight. Perhaps the most telling is that just 28% of respondents reported having what they considered a “healthy” relationship with work. And while that is a 1% increase over 2023, it is still a concerning number that the vast majority of people in all sectors of the economy — worldwide — feel like they aren’t balancing their work and home lives successfully. On the heels of that, two-thirds noted that they want work experiences that are more personalized for them, with an incredible 87% stating they would even be willing to take a pay cut to get a more inviting and welcoming work environment.

What does a “personalized work experience” actually mean? For many, it comes down to what we see playing out in the broader labor market, with workers demanding more flexibility in their hours and location. Even as major corporations push for return-to-office mandates, they are seeing their highest-skilled and productive workers walk out the door. But, as the WRI illustrates, it’s not just the workers who benefit when companies are willing to meet them halfway. A few highlights:

64% of knowledge workers say if work were tailored or customized to personal needs and preferences, they would be more invested in their company's growth.
69% of knowledge workers believe it would enhance their overall well-being.
68% of knowledge workers stated it would incentivize them to stay with their current employers longer.

AI on the Brain

This was a great way to set up the main theme for every division and product category HP highlighted this year: AI. “We are going through a period of rapid change,” Enrique Lores, president and CEO, told the audience. “AI will play a critical role in this transformation.”

In large part, the company took a closer look at some of the — admittedly — intriguing AI tools it is introducing in its laptops and other consumer and business electronics, with tools designed to enhance a person’s ability to do their job rather than take it over completely. These include things like creating an on-device, searchable database so you can find information quickly across a wide range of documents — and even get summaries and talking points, for example, quickly and easily without having to find all that information yourself manually. The company also introduced HP Boost, which uses shared GPU resources to speed up those AI processes and make it feel like a seamless tool that can speed up the busy work, freeing up workers to focus on the creative parts of the job.

HP had vignettes set up, created using various print technologies.

But what does this focus on AI mean for wide-format and commercial printers? Daniel Martinez, Global Head and General Manager, HP Large Format, sat down to chat about how this focus on AI is trickling into the print-for-pay space — some of it right now and some of it coming in the next year.

One of the innovations he mentioned is that HP Click, which was a separate application, has been moved into a driver, which is being rolled out to all print users on the Windows 11 platform within the next few months. He notes, “We expect a lot of visibility, especially simplifying the printing process in that space. By bringing Click into the driver path, it provides us with the platform to enable new services, for example, enabling a higher resolution on existing files. So let's say that you're trying to print a file through the driver, and we identify that the resolution of that file for the size that you're trying to print is not good enough. This AI service would enhance the image quality of that file, and it would make it more suitable for that size print. That's an example of how we can bring AI to the broader spectrum of users in a use case that we know our customers encounter pretty much on a daily basis.”

Print OS is another area that is seeing AI enhancements, with Martinez noting that on the service side, it is already being put to good use to improve the operation of the presses, including things like the ability for AI to automatically determine and set the appropriate settings for the job type and substrates you intend to run — think moving between a poster and a wallpaper application on the same press, for example. Rather than an operator needing to make the adjustments manually, Print OS, with its AI features, can easily make those changes seamlessly to keep the presses operating at a peak capacity.

He also touched on Live Production, which was launched at PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas in September, which brings generative AI to the production workflow. He notes, “Basically, it is now remote queue management that allows you to pause, cancel, and reorder your jobs across your fleet of HP devices — at least for now, only HP devices — with the use of AI. You could also optimize those queues to, say, prioritize a certain customer or a certain job type you want to ensure you get prioritized within that queue.”

Although, he notes, that is just the beginning of where he sees AI going for production printing. “I think most importantly is the fact that the amount of data that we're getting on the devices is second to none in the industry, and therefore, our ability to turn that data into AI services is an area that we're very focused on, and that we think we have a very great head start on compared to some of our competitors in the industry,” he says.

Overall, HP Imagine 2024 was focused on AI, and the company has a very clear vision for how it can be used as a powerful tool to enhance the way work, which in turn creates a more personalized environment so many workers are searching for. With the right tools, HP believes work can be something people look forward to and want to engage with rather than being something they endure. It is an exciting look at where HP sees the future of technology heading, and it will be truly interesting to see how it all plays out over the coming months and years as it continues to evolve.