AI-Powered PDF Query — A Guide to Asking Questions About Your PDF Content With AI.

Have you ever been faced with a long document and wished you could ask the writer a couple of quick questions about what they said and whether they covered specific points? Or written one and want to check that a reader will be able to find what they want? Well, now you can.

The AI-powered Assistant in Adobe Acrobat will generate suggested questions for you, answer your questions, give you answers, and make it easy for you to find the source of the answers. Read on to learn more.

What you’ll learn

• What the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant is and what it does
• What you’ll get from the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant
• Types of documents and situations to use the Acrobat Assistant
• Other AI features in Acrobat
• FAQs

What is Acrobat Assistant and what does it do?

Acrobat Assistant is an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to help you explore and understand PDF content. Just like you might ask the author of a document to explain or speak to the content it includes, you can have a conversation with the AI Assistant in Acrobat to understand a document and learn about what’s covered in it. The gen-AI assistant in Acrobat will also give you links to the source information and where to find it in the document.

Use the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant to ask any questions you may have about a PDF’s content, and it will do the reading and synthesis for you. Acrobat’s AI-powered Assistant will also generate a list of suggested questions to get you started and give you an idea about the types of information that are in the PDF.

Acrobat’s Assistant uses integrated generative AI techniques with your PDF content to help you retrieve specific information and navigate through the document. It’s an AI Assistant in Acrobat that simulates human interaction and helps you to access information and interact with PDF content quickly and easily.

What the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant gives you.

When you use the AI-powered Assistant in Acrobat you will open an interactive panel that gives you a list of suggested questions based on your PDF content. You can also ask any questions on a PDF document that you wish. The Acrobat Assistant will then read your content and explain it. You’ll get —

• answers to your questions based on your PDF content
• clickable links to the document sources the AI answers were generated from

If you have any follow-up questions to any AI-generated responses, you can then ask again and the AI assistance in Acrobat will drill down and explore the content further for you.

Use the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant in different contexts and document types.

The AI-powered Acrobat Assistant will work with all document types — whether you’re in business, a working professional, a researcher, a student, a content creator, or just trying to get to grips with the contents of a lengthy PDF document at home.

Just some of the ways you may use Ask Acrobat include —

• Contracts
  Use the Acrobat Assistant to locate specific terms and conditions or clauses in a contract. For example —
  • in a property agreement, you might have a question about what the contract includes in terms of the rights of a tenant, landlord, property seller or property purchaser
  • in an employment agreement, you might have a question about the different types of employee benefits included in the contract

• Business reports
  In business reports use the Acrobat Assistant to ask questions about operational performance. For example —
  • questions about results and performance for a particular fiscal year or business unit
  • questions to identify highlights, challenges, or areas of improvement

• Articles
  Get the Acrobat Assistant to answer questions you have about article contents of any type — media articles, journal articles, lifestyle articles, educational and informational articles, and so forth. For example —
  • in a media article about global warming, you might want to use Ask Acrobat to ask about the solutions that are included
  • in a lifestyle article about how to live and work sustainably, you could use Ask Acrobat to ask questions about working from home versus being office-based
  • in a journal article presenting a study or research findings, you could use Ask Acrobat to ask specific questions about the text in the discussion section

You can get to work with the beta version of the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant in Adobe Acrobat Standard, Adobe Acrobat Pro and Adobe Acrobat Online.

Other AI-powered features in Adobe Acrobat.

There are a few other generative AI tools and features in Acrobat to help you read and understand the information in PDF files and create content for PDFs that is well written. These are —

• Document insights.
  
  Use the AI-powered Assistant in Acrobat to read the contents of a document for you and summarize it at the same time. With this Acrobat AI feature, you’ll get a short concise outline and summary of each section, the main points covered by the content, and cited sources to click into the full content.
  
  This feature is useful for people in a wide range of business environments, working professionals, students, educators, and more.
• Editing assistance.
  
  The AI-powered Acrobat Assistant can be your proofreader, editor, writing coach, and more. You can use Acrobat AI Edit Assist to —
  • turn paragraphs into bulleted lists
  • reformat and rephrase text
  • lengthen or shorten content
  • adjust your tone and voice

It can be used by anyone to help improve whatever words they’re working with — report writing, business documents, blog content, marketing materials, and more.

FAQs.

Are the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant’s answers accurate?

Acrobat’s Gen AI features use the content in the PDFs you are reading and working with, and some pretty clever algorithms and information about language comprehension, usage, and formatting. However, as with any generative artificial intelligence, there are limitations. Do use your human skills as well to double-check that the AI-generated content is correct and meets your requirements.

Can Acrobat AI features be used in academia?

Check with your academic institution’s policies on the extent of AI you may use in the creation of assignments. Whether you’re a student or someone working in a teaching or research capacity, there will likely be an expectation and obligation to complete and submit work that is your own. There is good reason for this. Being able to read documents, ask questions yourself about what they say, create summaries and outlines, and write well are important skills that you need as a human being in the workforce — now and in the future.

Submitting an assignment or article entirely created by AI as your work is likely to be unacceptable in an academic setting. However, using the AI features in Acrobat as part of an assignment demonstrating how it can be used in a business report or other piece of writing, and to show how you did it, will probably be perfectly okay.

What is the beta version of Acrobat Assistant?

The AI-powered Acrobat Assistant is currently in the beta phase. This is a stage of development where it’s ready for Acrobat users to use. The beta version of the Acrobat Assistant is limited to work with files less than 120 pages, less than 25MB in size, and files that do not have the “do not copy” option enabled and are not password protected. Fully engage with it, use it with your documents, and get to know what it can do. At the same time, we welcome your feedback on how it’s working for you.