New Adobe 'AI Assistant' will tackle your long, dense PDFs
Few things are more daunting than the impenetrable block of text that is a PDF. But Adobe now has an AI solution to help you out.
On Tuesday, Adobe introduced AI Assistant for interacting with PDFs. The new AI tool, which is currently in beta, has a chatbot interface that enables users to ask questions about and generate summaries of the document.
AI Assistant also provides citations and clickable links, allowing users to easily find the text it's referencing. It's available on Adobe Reader, its PDF viewer, and Acrobat, Adobe's software for creating and editing PDFs.
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Adobe's grand generative AI plans
The company that actually created the PDF, and continues to have a stronghold on the versatile and secure format for sharing files, has been exploring AI tools within its image and design software. Almost a year ago, it unveiled Adobe Firefly, a generative AI tool where users can create and edit images based on Adobe's commercial-use stock library. Now Adobe is applying its Firefly models to reading and understanding text more easily.
Adobe also plans to add more generative AI capabilities, including gathering relevant information and insights from multiple documents, editing and formatting documents, making it easier to compile and analyze feedback within documents. Per the announcement, third-party LLMs are blocked from training on customer data.
This is great news if you're already a Reader and Acrobat customer, since the beta version is free to try out. However, once AI Assistant moves out of beta, it will become a subscription add-on.
Adobe didn't provide details on how much more it will cost. AI Assistant for Acrobat Standard and Pro versions for both individual and team account is available now and coming to Adobe Reader in the coming weeks.
Cecily is a tech reporter at Mashable who covers AI, Apple, and emerging tech trends. Before getting her master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she spent several years working with startups and social impact businesses for Unreasonable Group and B Lab. Before that, she co-founded a startup consulting business for emerging entrepreneurial hubs in South America, Europe, and Asia. You can find her on X at @cecily_mauran.
