Whether it’s a contract you need to sign, a receipt you’re looking at, or a report you’re about to read, most of the electronic documents you interact with every day are in PDF format. To optimize the way you use your PDFs, Adobe is launching a new AI assistant.
On Tuesday, Adobe revealed its new AI Assistant beta in Acrobat and Reader. It is an AI-powered conversational engine that can answer any user question about a document or generate summaries.
To start, nothing could be simpler. Acrobat and Reader users will simply open the apps, where they will find the AI assistant in beta, which they can then use for a range of tasks, including providing answers to recommended or user-generated questions, via a chatbot.
Generate text based on content
In addition to asking questions about the content of the document, users can also ask the AI assistant to generate text based on the content. For example, they can request the writing of an email that summarizes the conclusions of the document. Users can then copy and paste the summary elsewhere using a “copy” button.
The answers provided by the engine include quotes contained within the pages of the document in question. When you click on the quote, you are not only taken to the page, but you also get a preview of the page’s responses.
Additionally, the AI assistant can provide generative summaries that give users a brief overview of content, regardless of its length, giving them a good idea of the content they are about to view before they even begin.
In beta version at no additional cost
“Generative AI promises smarter document experiences to transform information overload into actionable insights and professional content,” said Abhigyan Modi, SVP of Adobe Document Cloud.
Since users will be importing documents that may contain confidential information, Adobe has taken privacy concerns into account. The company assures its customers that data security protocols govern the new AI Assistant feature. No customer document content is stored or used to further train the AI technology.
Acrobat AI Assistant is available in beta at no additional cost for individual and team subscriptions of Acrobat Standard and Pro on desktop, according to the release. The AI Assistant in Reader will be rolling out in English to desktop users in the coming weeks, also at no additional cost, which is especially noteworthy given that Reader is a free app.
The competition is already there
It is worth noting that PDF chatbots, such as ChatPDF, already exist on the market. I regularly use ChatPDF, it is very effective in digesting the content of large documents.
Adobe’s PDF chatbot has the potential to be even more useful because it natively integrates its conversational engine into Reader and Acrobat, which are the standard PDF viewing platforms. Stay tuned to read our hands-on test, in which we’ll share our first impressions of this new tool.
Source: “ZDNet.com”