Adobe's Acrobat beta adds assistant for summarizing long PDF files

QUICK ZAPS

Adobe Acrobat is adding a new AI assistant tool to help users navigate and understand large PDF documents more easily. The "AI Assistant in Acrobat" is a chatbot that can be used within the Acrobat app to search for information, ask questions about the contents, and get summaries of documents. This aims to reduce the time it takes for tasks like researching for school or summarizing reports. 

The assistant works by assessing what a document is about and then recommending questions a user might have. It can then directly answer questions by finding the relevant information in the text. It also automatically cites where information came from and can link to specific sections. This allows users to verify answers. The AI assistant can take parts of one or multiple documents and consolidate them into a brief summary that is ready to include in an email or presentation. 

The new tool is currently in beta testing and available for free to paying Acrobat users. In the future, it may require a separate subscription. Adobe plans to expand the assistant's capabilities over time by connecting it to their other AI, allowing it to search multiple documents at once, and helping generate first drafts of documents. The goal is to use AI to make working with large PDF files much more efficient and easy.