Adobe Acrobat adds generative AI to ‘easily chat with documents’

Adobe is adding a new generative AI experience to its Acrobat PDF management software, which aims to “completely transform the digital document experience” by making information in long documents easier to find and understand. Announced in Adobe’s press release as “AI Assistant in Acrobat,” the new tool is described as a “conversational engine” that can summarize files, answer questions, and recommend more based on the content, allowing users to “easily chat with documents” to get the information they need. It’s available in beta starting today for paying Acrobat users.

The idea is that the chatbot will reduce the time-consuming tasks related to working with massive text documents — such as helping students quickly find information for research projects or summarizing large reports into snappy highlights for emails, meetings, and presentations. AI Assistant in Acrobat can be used with all document formats supported by the app, including Word and PowerPoint. The chatbot abides by Adobe’s data security protocols, so it won’t store data from customer documents or use it to train AI Assistant.

At launch, AI Assistant can assess a document’s contents and recommend questions that users may wish to explore, in addition to answering questions about that content. The feature also generates citations that allow users to verify the source of the answers provided by AI Assistant and can create clickable links that jump directly to specific information within long documents. Acrobat users can also ask the chatbot to consolidate and format information into digestible copy for emails, reports, presentations, and more.

The new AI Assistant experience is available for Acrobat customers on Standard ($12.99 per month), Pro ($19.99 per month), and Teams subscription plans across both desktop and web. AI Assistant will be available to those customers “at no additional cost” while the product is in beta. However, Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president for Adobe Document Cloud, told The Verge, “Reader and Acrobat customers will have access to the full range of AI Assistant capabilities through a new add-on subscription plan when AI Assistant is out of beta.” 

Adobe hasn’t said how long AI Assistant is expected to be in beta, but the company already has a roadmap of future capabilities that it plans to roll out. These include integrations with its Firefly generative AI model, the ability to pull information from multiple documents, document types, and sources simultaneously, and features for generating first drafts and editing copy.