Just when we thought we’d seen the last of Microsoft’s infamous Clippy, the Office Virtual Assistant, it appears the much-maligned paper clip was simply ahead of his time.
Adobe has introduced AI Assistant in beta, a new generative AI-powered conversational engine in Reader and Acrobat. Deeply integrated into Reader and Acrobat workflows, AI Assistant instantly generates summaries and insights from long documents, answers questions and formats information for sharing in emails, reports and presentations. AI Assistant is bringing generative AI to the masses, unlocking new value from the information inside the approximately 3 trillion PDFs in the world.
AI Assistant leverages the same artificial intelligence and machine learning models behind Acrobat Liquid Mode, the award-winning technology that supports responsive reading experiences for PDFs on mobile. These proprietary models provide a deep understanding of PDF structure and content, enhancing quality and reliability in AI Assistant outputs.
“Generative AI offers the promise of more intelligent document experiences by transforming the information inside PDFs into actionable knowledge and professional-looking content,” said Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president, Document Cloud. “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.”
Immediately delivering new value
Acrobat Individual, Pro and Teams customers and Acrobat Pro trialists can use the AI Assistant beta to work more productively today, with features coming to Reader over coming days and weeks. No complicated implementations are required. Simply open Reader or Acrobat and start working with the new capabilities, including:
- AI Assistant: AI Assistant recommends questions based on a PDF’s content and answers questions about what’s in the document – all through an intuitive conversational interface.
- Generative summary: Get a quick understanding of the content inside long documents with short overviews in easy-to-read formats.
- Intelligent citations: Adobe’s custom attribution engine and proprietary AI generate citations so customers can easily verify the source of AI Assistant’s answers.
- Easy navigation: Clickable links help customers quickly find what they need in long documents so they can focus their time exploring and actioning the most important information.
- Formatted output: Ask AI Assistant to consolidate and format information into top takeaways, text for emails, presentations, reports and more. A “copy” button makes it easy to cut, paste and pass along.
- Respect for customer data: AI Assistant features in Reader and Acrobat are governed by data security protocols and no customer document content is stored or used for training AI Assistant without their consent.
- Beyond PDF: Customers can use AI Assistant with all kinds of document formats (Word, PowerPoint, meeting transcripts, etc.)
Innovating a global standard
PDF is the place where individuals and organisations keep their most important information. Thirty years after Adobe invented PDF, Acrobat remains the gold standard for reading, editing and transforming PDFs. And Acrobat is everywhere – on desktops, the web, mobile devices, as a stand-alone application and embedded in leading browsers and productivity apps like Microsoft and Google.
AI Assistant in Reader and Acrobat has guardrails in place so that all customers – from individuals to the largest enterprises – can use the features with confidence. Enterprise-grade security and information governance are available for large business customers. AI Assistant is developed in alignment with Adobe’s AI Ethics processes. With AI Assistant in Reader and Acrobat, Adobe takes an LLM-agnostic approach, selecting best-in-class technologies that address a range of customer use cases. Adobe prohibits third-party LLMs from training on Adobe customer data. Read more about how Adobe is leading secure, responsible generative AI in digital documents.
Productivity for all
AI Assistant in Reader and Acrobat transforms long documents and overwhelming information into helpful insights and easy-to-understand, actionable content. Project managers can now scan, summarise and distribute meeting highlights in seconds. Sales teams can personalise pitch decks and respond to client requests in minutes. Students can shorten the time they spend hunting through research and spend more time on analysis and insights. Social media and marketing teams can quickly surface top trends and issues into daily updates for stakeholders. AI Assistant streamlines the time it takes to compose an email or scan through a contract of any kind, delivering productivity to knowledge workers and consumers everywhere. Click here to see how people are using AI Assistant to save time and get insights faster.
The future of intelligent document experiences
Today’s announcement signals the beginning of Adobe’s vision to leverage generative AI to reimagine the value of digital documents. Adobe has a deep and rich roadmap ahead for AI Assistant capabilities:
- Insights across multiple documents and document types: AI Assistant will work across multiple documents, document types and sources, instantly surfacing the most important information from everywhere.
- AI-powered authoring, editing and formatting: Last year, customers edited billions of documents in Acrobat. AI Assistant will make it simple to quickly generate first drafts, help with copy editing – instantly changing voice and tone, compressing copy length and suggesting content design and layout.
- Intelligent creation: Key features from Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative models, and Adobe Express will make it simple for anyone to make their documents more creative, professional and personal.
- Elevating document collaboration with AI-supported reviews: Digital collaboration is how work gets from draft to done. And with a 75% year-over-year increase in the number of documents shared, more collaboration is happening in Acrobat than ever. Generative AI will make the process simple, analysing feedback and comments, suggesting changes and even highlighting and helping resolve conflicting feedback.
Pricing and availability
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.
