Adobe to introduce AI assistant for search, summarising PDFs

Adobe has rolled out an AI assistant within its PDF reader and Acrobat applications, aimed at providing summaries and answering queries about PDFs and other documents.

This AI assistant, presently in beta, is accessible via Acrobat, with upcoming plans to expand its features to Adobe Reader in the coming days and weeks, as per a press release quoted by CNBC.

Adobe aims to roll out a subscription plan for the tool after the beta phase.

Designed to aid users in digesting information from lengthy PDFs, the AI assistant generates concise summaries of document content and offers answers through a conversational interface, along with suggesting potential questions about the file.

Furthermore, Adobe claims that the AI assistant has the capability to generate citations for verifying information sources and generate text for a variety of formats, including emails, presentations, and reports.

While other AI models like ChatGPT offer PDF readers facilitating document analysis, they typically require users to upload the documents. In contrast, Adobe's AI assistant is an integrated feature.

In an interview with CNBC's "Squawk on the Street," Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen emphasised the tool's role in democratising access to the vast trove of PDFs in existence.

Narayen highlighted scenarios where users could engage with lengthy documents, understand summaries, and conduct conversations, correlating information with other documents within an enterprise context.

Addressing questions about potential competition from OpenAI's model Sora, which generates high-definition video from text prompts, Narayen noted Adobe's ongoing work on video models, emphasising responsible application within tools and workflows.