Adobe’s new AI tool is here to power up PDFs

In PDF news this week, Adobe is rolling out a new beta AI feature for its Acrobat and Reader platforms. Dubbed AI Assistant in Acrobat, it’s a generative AI-conversation engine that aims to drastically simplify how people and companies interact with the 3 trillion PDFs that currently exist in the world.

This new AI feature is said to make it easier to extract summaries and insights from lengthy PDF documents. From there, the information can be used for other content use such as emails, reports, presentations and more.

It will also be able to answer users’ questions about the documents being worked on, generate citations to the sources the AI used to answer their questions and create clickable links that will take users directly to certain information within longer documents.

Built on the foundation of Adobe’s Acrobat Liquid Mode technology, known for enhancing PDF readability on mobile devices, AI Assistant promises improved quality and reliability in its outputs.

Adobe says this is due to its proprietary AI and machine learning models that have a nuanced understanding of PDF structure and content. These are the sorts of bold claims one might usually take with a grain of salt when it comes to new AI features. But in the case of Adobe, it tracks because the company itself invented the PDF three decades ago.

In addition to PDFs, AI Assistant in Acrobat can be used with any document types that are supported by the app. This includes the likes of PowerPoint and Word.

Abhigyan Modi, Adobe’s senior vice president of Document Cloud, underscored the significance of PDFs as the global standard for critical documents.

“Generative AI offers the promise of more intelligent document experiences by transforming the information inside PDFs into actionable knowledge and professional-looking content,” Modi said.

“PDF is the de facto standard for the world’s most important documents and the capabilities introduced today are just the beginning of the value AI Assistant will deliver through Reader and Acrobat applications and services.”

According to Adobe, AI Assistant in Acrobat has been designed with security and ethical AI use in mind, ensuring a safe and reliable experience for all users, from individual consumers to large enterprises.

The beta version is now available for Acrobat Standard and Pro subscribers on desktop and web in English, with plans to extend support to Reader and other languages in the near future. A private beta is also open to enterprise customers.

Pricing is currently unavailable but once the tool is out of beta it will be available as a bolt-on to subscriptions.

Adobe began pushing harder into AI in 2023, announcing Sensei GenAI and Firefly at its annual summit in Las Vegas, which plug directly into the Adobe Experience Cloud.