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Adobe's PDF-reading AI Assistant starts at $4.99/month - here's how to try it for free
Most of the research, financial info, service terminology and other data we interact with every day is housed in PDFs. But parsing them efficiently and reliably can be time-consuming. Adobe's artificial intelligence (AI) assistant is meant to help.
On Monday, the company announced that Acrobat AI Assistant is now generally available. After releasing the tool in beta for desktop and web in February, Adobe is offering it as a subscription starting at $4.99 per month.
With a chatbot-like interface, AI Assistant is designed to let users ask questions about a document -- to surface the information they need quickly and easily. It parses PDFs for their content and then prompts users with recommended questions that let you "chat" with your documents.
Also: The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT isn't the only one worth trying
AI Assistant's custom attribution engine ensures that you'll always get citations with its answers – an especially important feature given some models' tendency to hallucinate information. Custom attribution makes AI Assistant potentially helpful as a study buddy.
Announced on US Tax Day, Adobe made the case for AI Assistant's potential to help people understand financial documents and pull out key information to help them file (especially for procrastinators).
Also: The best free tax software for filing your taxes
The AI tool also summarizes content into short overviews, providing "top takeaways" readily formatted for emails, presentations, blogs, and reports.
Adobe's Assistant boosts productivity beyond working with PDFs: It's compatible with other document formats such as Word, PowerPoint, and more. Currently, AI Assistant is available in English; other languages are on the way.
Users who have the free Reader version of Acrobat or a paid individual plan can get the full capability of AI Assistant via subscription, starting at $4.99. Adobe said this is early access pricing that will be available until June 5. For those looking to try before they buy, AI Assistant is available in beta on Reader mobile for free. This version is also enabled with voice commands, meaning users can verbally ask AI Assistant to summarize and query docs.
Also: Adobe Premiere Pro's two new AI tools blew my mind. Watch them in action for yourself