Summarize PDFs with an Assistant That’s AI-Powered in Acrobat.

Reading and summarising a long document or multiple documents can take quite a bit of time — that you don’t always have. When you want to quickly get to the content that matters the most to you, use the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant. It will summarize PDF documents for you.

Acrobat’s AI-powered Assistant feature is one of our transformational generative AI tools in Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Pro to help you read and navigate documents — saving you a lot of time and effort.

What you’ll learn

• What an AI-powered Assistant is and how it works
• What you’ll get with AI-powered Acrobat Assistant Summaries
• How to use Acrobat Assistant summaries with PDF documents
• Other AI-powered features in Adobe Acrobat
• FAQs

What is an AI-powered Assistant and how does it work?

The AI-powered Assistant in Acrobat can be used to create an AI-generated summary of a PDF document. The goal of AI summaries is to extract and summarize the most important and relevant information from the original content. This makes it quicker and easier for you to navigate and understand the content of documents while keeping true to the core meaning and context. It reads the document for you and then creates an outline and summary of each section that you can then read and use to navigate through the content in more depth.

When you summarize a PDF with AI, summaries are created using natural language processing techniques and machine learning algorithms that analyse the text in a document to create a condensed version.

What you’ll get with Acrobat Assistant summaries.

When you use AI-powered Acrobat Assistant to create summaries in a PDF document, you’ll see a separate interactive pane that summarises your PDF content. This generative AI summary gives you insights into your document content, including —

• an outline and a brief summary of each section that flows according to the structure of the document, the main topics, and the short summaries of the content.
• the ability to click on each topic and summary to navigate to the source of the content and full text in your original document.

Use AI-powered Assistant with all types of PDF documents.

Acrobat Assistant’s AI-powered summaries can be used with all types of content in PDF files and in different contexts — articles, reports, manuals, plans, proposals, and other document types. Just some of the ways you may use it include —

• Long document summaries.
  AI-powered Assistant summaries can be applied to long documents, reports, contracts, legal texts, manuals, proposals, and other written materials to extract key points.

• Research and study findings.
  Summarize lengthy research papers or studies with Smart Outline AI Summaries to provide an overview of the methodology, findings, and implications.

• Articles and reports.
  Smart Outline AI Summaries can summarise articles and reports to provide readers with a snapshot or condensed version containing the most important points and details from the full version.

• Multiple PDF files.
  Smart Outline AI Summaries can be used to quickly understand the main points of multiple articles, and efficiently consume large amounts of information.

Other AI-powered features in Adobe Acrobat.

You’ll find other useful AI features have been incorporated in Adobe Acrobat to understand your content and take it to the next level. These include the ability to —

• “Talk” to your PDF document.
  The AI-powered Acrobat Assistant will generate a list of suggested questions for you based on the information in the document. Use these AI-generated questions to explore, gain insights, and dive deeper into the content of your PDFs.
  
  You can formulate questions as well. Ask the Acrobat Assistant questions, and you will get answers from your content and citations of where the information has been sourced from. You can even ask follow-up questions. This AI feature in Acrobat allows you to drill down even more on your content to find the content that matches your interests and needs.

• Create several types of documents.
  Convert and repurpose your PDF content for other documents. Save time rewriting and tweaking your content for different purposes and audiences. AI-powered Acrobat Assist can transform your content into emails, white papers, web articles, and presentations.
• Improve your writing prowess.
  The AI-powered Acrobat Assistant can also act as your writing coach. Use it to polish and perfect written content. You can use Acrobat Assistant to —
  • reformat and rephrase text
  • adjust tone and voice
  • lengthen or shorten content
  • turn paragraphs into bulleted lists
  • apply consistent formatting throughout your document

• Generate AI images for your content.
  In combination with Adobe Firefly, write prompts to create AI-generated images to include in your PDF documents.

FAQs

Is generative the AI technology in Acrobat accurate?

The generative AI content created in Acrobat tools and features is created based on the content you have asked it to read, natural language processing techniques and machine learning algorithms. When you’re using AI for a content summary, such as Ask Acrobat, as with any AI-generated content a human touch and set of eyes may help fine-tune and customize your content even further.

What is the AI-powered Acrobat Assistant beta version?

Acrobat’s Gen AI features for PDF document consumption and creation are currently in the beta phase. This means it’s at a stage of development ready for Acrobat users to fully engage with it, use it with their documents, and really get to know what it can do. 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 or are password-protected. At the same time, we welcome feedback and input on how you are using the AI features and what they are doing for you.

Can students use the Smart Outline feature in Acrobat for assignments?

The policies of any academic or educational institution are likely to tell you that any work you submit must be your own and not plagiarized from other sources or completed by other means. Why? Along with helping you learn your subject matter, the skills that you develop in essay and assignment writing are going to take you a long way in your future career.

It may be perfectly acceptable to generate a content summary using the Smart Outline feature in Acrobat in an assignment that asks to show how AI technology can be used. However, it is not likely to be okay to use AI for a content outline that you are supposed to have written yourself based on a required text or reading.

Always check with your academic institution on their current policy on the use of AI in assignment completion. That said, knowing how to use AI to polish your writing is a skill that you are likely to take into a wide range of professionals and industries — now and in the future.