Do I really need to chat to my PDFs?

Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Adobe is betting you’ll want to use artificial intelligence to chat with PDFs and even pay for the pr [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Austin Carr]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Adobe is betting you’ll want to use artificial intelligence to chat with PDFs and even pay for the privilege. But first... Three things you need to know today: - Mark Zuckerberg is starting a [tour of Asia by making katanas]( - Nvidia’s surge caused a [$3 billion loss for short sellers]( - Xiaomi’s new cameraphones are [stirring excitement]( Doing the reading for you Last week, Adobe Inc. introduced a conversational AI service that’ll summarize and search the company’s ubiquitous Portable Document Format files. The bot will live inside subscription versions of Adobe’s Acrobat and Reader apps, raising a funny question: Is anyone really excited to converse with a PDF? This sort of AI assistance, dubbed a copilot, is proliferating with the promise of big productivity gains in exchange for a recurring fee. Microsoft Corp. [charges an extra $20 a month]( to get access to its AI inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint, while Google asks a similar levy to [enable its Gemini model in Docs and Gmail](. Specialization holds the promise of making these AI features more useful, but it also threatens to trigger subscription fatigue. Currently, Adobe’s AI assistant is available as a preview to subscribers of its PDF readers, which begin at $13 a month. It’ll come with an add-on price when it’s out of beta. When activated, the chatbot pops up in a side panel hugging the PDF and can pull out important points of the text and answer questions about the data inside. (It can handle Word files and other digital texts too.) With some 400 billion PDFs opened annually and 16 billion documents edited in Acrobat last year, it’s no wonder Adobe execs are amped about the service’s potential. In an interview last fall focused on [AI image generation coming to Photoshop](, David Wadhwani, who oversees Adobe’s digital media business, stressed that the PDF shouldn’t be overlooked as a major part of its AI subscriptions going forward. “What we believe we want to enable is your ability to have a conversation with the document and the document's author,” said Wadhwani, who suggested users could pay for a certain number of credits to spend on chat queries. Based on my initial tests, I’m not sure that the bot is advanced enough to justify an extra fee. Across a handful of lengthy PDFs, Adobe’s assistant was able to synthesize text into requested themes, add up financial figures, and pluck contact information — pretty convenient for someone like me who spends a lot of time digesting earnings reports and court filings. But the AI doesn’t yet work with scanned PDFs, cannot read images or penmanship, and takes a long time to digest longer texts. For example, the PDF AI took nearly three minutes to go through Adobe’s latest 10-K filing, weighing in at 99 pages, before it was ready for action. It's also worth noting that the AI isn’t much of a conversationalist. I’m reminded more of [Clippy]( than ChatGPT, as it surfaced auto-suggested prompts for various things it can locate within the text. (Ask a personal question like how the bot is doing today, and Adobe will tell you its “AI language model does not provide any relevant information about how it is doing today.”) Another issue is that my [ChatGPT Plus subscription]( is already able to perform similar tasks and more: Just upload a PDF and OpenAI’s flagship tool can summarize the document quickly, including scanned content. An Adobe spokesperson says reading scanned PDFs is on the 2024 product roadmap and that the company is actively researching AI processing for graphics and handwriting in the longer term. Adobe is also exploring how to use AI in the PDF creation process, such as with writing structure, tone and layout automation. But as generalist bots grow ever smarter, specialist AIs will have to be way sharper and swifter to set themselves apart. So far, chatting with my PDFs feels about as dull as reading them myself.—[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) The big story Jeff Bezos and Nvidia have joined OpenAI and Microsoft in investing in a business that’s [developing human-like robots.]( The startup Figure AI is raising about $675 million in a round that carries a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion, according to people with knowledge of the situation. One to watch Reddit’s move toward an IPO is catalyzed in part by the demand for liquidity from current holders, Brianne Lynch of EquityZen tells Caroline Hyde. Get fully charged Meta’s Zuckerberg seeks to avoid being held personally responsible in two dozen lawsuits accusing him of [children’s social media addictions.]( Latin American e-commerce and payments firm MercadoLibre fell the most it has in nearly two years after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that [missed analysts’ estimates.]( Kenya was added to a global financial watchdog’s “gray list” again because of its flaws in [tackling illicit financial flows.]( US data center operator Equinix plans to invest $390 million building and [expanding operations in Africa.]( aMore from Bloomberg Get Bloomberg Tech weeklies in your inbox: - [Cyber Bulletin]( for coverage of the shadow world of hackers and cyber-espionage - [Game On]( for reporting on the video game business - [Power On]( for Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more - [Screentime]( for a front-row seat to the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley - [Soundbite]( for reporting on podcasting, the music industry and audio trends - [Q&AI]( for answers to all your questions about AI Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? 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