Back in 1972, my Dad was an attorney. He used to dictate into a tape recorder, and later his secretary would present him with a contract ready to go, with an envelope and “sign here” tabs in place.  His assistant was performing the task of creating the document, and preparing it to be sent.  This let him focus on higher order tasks, and the assistant was very good at making sure the contracts were ready and error free. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Artificial Intelligence (AI) as:

The ability of a digital or computer-controlled to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.

In essence, AI seeks to duplicate tasks that require a human being. When applied to preparing Documents for the signature process, AI might feel a little like my Dad’s assistant from 1972.

The new “Intelligent Document Recognition” (IDR) capability of DocuSign Pro 2.0 has been a very interesting foray into the application of AI to the task of preparing documents for signature – creating an “assistant” capable of preparing your documents for you.

As some know, DocuSign has a very powerful feature called “Signing Workflow Templates.” These templates describe the signing process that should be applied to a document. Signing Workflow Templates include everything about the signing workflow – who is to sign (buyer, seller), where they are to sign, initial, or provide data, how they should authenticate, what sequence should be followed, etc. They are incredibly powerful because they allow a sender of a document to have the benefit of standardizing on a workflow for signing by simply applying a template to a document when they go to send it. All the sender has to do is apply the right template. This gives the power of exact signature placement, with “one click” simplicity. The only challenge is selecting the proper template to apply.

Enter AI. (and the word “automagically”)

With the release of DocuSign Pro 2.0, these signing templates are automagically applied to documents on the fly, and these templates are created automagically on the fly. The system literally learns the documents you send for signature, where you place signatures, what sort of recipients you use, etc. Once it learns this, it automatically begins to place your “sign here” tabs, and prepares your documents for you…just like my Dad’s assistant in 1972.

The amazing part – how it works

The way IDR works is very similar to the way a human being decides which document is being presented. It ‘looks at it’. It literally does the same thing a human does –- it reads the first few sentences of the document, it looks for pictures and other tell-tale signs, and decides if it has seen it before. If it has, it knows exactly where to put your signature tabs, and what roles will be signing.

More amazing

DocuSign Pro 2.0 is even capable of “looking at pictures.” My favorite demo involves two documents that have nothing but pictures. Document One is a picture of a golf course, Document Two is a picture of the Columbia River. From a distance, a human could not tell the difference, DocuSign Pro’s “Document Assistant” can reliably differentiate the two images without a problem.

Even more amazing

Some “line of business applications” used by our customers actually create PDF documents on the fly which are actually composed of multiple documents. This poses a unique challenge – how to tell what documents are inside the single file, and then determining if any of these documents are recognized. Well, our Document Prep Assistant is able to do this as well. It literally recognizes that there are multiple documents inside one file, and can place signatures and assign roles to the documents inside properly –- no matter what order these documents may appear.

The experience of sending documents for signature using DocuSign Pro now feels a lot like you have your own assistant looking over your shoulder helping you work faster and work smarter.

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