Adobe launches AI Assistant to edit, summarise PDFs on Reader, Acrobat

Adobe has unveiled an AI Assistant for Reader and Acrobat that can generate summaries, insights, and answers questions from lengthy PDF documents.

The company, which made the announcement Tuesday, said its AI Assistant harnesses the artificial intelligence and machine learning models from Acrobat Liquid Mode, a technology that enables responsive PDF reading on mobile devices.

Portable Document Format, or PDF, was invented by Adobe three decades ago to solve the sharing of text and digital images over the net while keeping their original format intact.

According to Adobe, there are at present more than 3 trillion PDF documents in use.  

Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president, Document Cloud 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."

The San Jose-based company said that with the AI model, which is still in beta, it aims to help users get insights by swiftly extracting information from diverse documents and sources.

The AI-powered editing capabilities will simplify the process of generating drafts, editing content, and suggesting design layouts, it said.

When the AI Assistant transitions out of beta, the Reader and Acrobat users can access its complete suite of features through a new add-on subscription plan.

Meanwhile, these features are currently accessible in beta for Acrobat Standard and Pro Individual and Teams subscription plans, both on desktop and web platforms in English.

Additionally, Reader desktop users in English can expect these features in the coming weeks, at no extra charge, with support for other languages to follow.