LlamaIndex argues that traditional OCR, which makes one pass and returns unchecked text, is being replaced by agentic OCR. The approach treats parsing as a loop with layout-aware reading order, routing of hard elements such as tables and charts to suitable models, and multi-pass self-correction.
OCR is dead 🪦 Long live agentic OCR!
Traditional OCR makes one pass and hands back whatever text it got. Tables get flattened, charts disappear, and multi-column layouts come out scrambled. Nothing checks the output.
Agentic OCR treats parsing as a loop instead:
✅ layout-aware reading order
✅ smart routing of hard elements to the right model
✅ multi-pass verification and self-correction
✅ multimodal parsing of charts, images, and complex tables
Logan Markewich, LlamaIndex's Head of Open Source, wrote about what that shift looks like in practice and where it's still struggling. Link to the breakdown in the comments below.
Source: LlamaIndex 🦙 · x.comPublished · added here