PDF, the portable document format, has been a standard for three decades, and Adobe Acrobat has long been at the forefront of PDF tools, as well as its free younger brother, Adobe Reader.

Adobe's new AI Assistant is being deeply integrated into Reader and Acrobat workflows and will instantly generate summaries and insights from long documents, answer questions, format information for sharing in emails and reports and presentations, and much more.

The AI Assistant leverages the same artificial intelligence and machine learning models behind Acrobat Liquid Mode, the tech that supports responsive reading experiences for PDFs on mobile devices. Adobe's AI/ML tech already has a deep understanding of PDF structure and content, and the company is now bringing that to generative AI.

“Generative AI offers the promise of more intelligent document experiences by transforming the information inside PDFs into actionable knowledge and professional-looking content,” said Adobe Document Cloud SVP Abhigyan Modi. “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.”

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.)

Thirty years since Adobe invented PDF, it remains the standard for document sharing across platforms, and Acrobat remains the leader for reading, editing, and transforming PDFs. The AI Assistant has guardrails to ensure enterprise-grade security and information governance, and has been developed in alignment with Adobe's AI Ethics processes. The company prohibits third-party LLMs from training on Adobe customer data.

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.

Righty now, AI Assistant is in beta. Reader and Acrobat customers will have access to the full range of AI Assistant capabilities through a new add-on subscription plan when the beta period is over.