I have an expense form with handwritten entries and coffee stains; the ledger closes at [deadline=4pm] and the bookkee…
Open your PDF document in Adobe Acrobat (desktop, web, or mobile).
Ensure you are signed in with an Adobe account that has an active AI Assistant subscription.
If using Acrobat desktop and the AI Assistant is not visible, open the Edit menu, select Preferences, and check for a Generative AI section to enable the feature if available.
Best practiceIf you do not see the AI Assistant, updating Acrobat or enabling it in Preferences may be required.
Locate and select the AI Assistant feature (look for a button or panel labeled AI Assistant in the Acrobat interface).
Type your question about the PDF content into the message field provided by the AI Assistant.
Select the Send button or press Enter to send your question.
Review the AI Assistant's answer, and if needed, continue the conversation by asking follow-up questions or requesting clarifications.
Best practiceFor sensitive documents, avoid submitting confidential information, as AI-powered features may process data outside your local device.
You can interact with the AI Assistant panel to quickly extract key information or clarify details from your PDF without reading the entire document.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
The main benefit of AI Assistant is getting quick answers and insights from your documents, even across many files, with reliable source citations. This means you can quickly understand complex information without reading every page, and you can always verify the AI's answer by checking the original document. It saves a lot of time and makes information retrieval much more efficient.
AI Assistant works best with PDFs that contain selectable text. If your expense report is a scanned image without text recognition (OCR), the AI might not be able to 'read' the numbers to find totals. You might need to first convert the scanned image to a searchable PDF using Acrobat's OCR feature before AI Assistant can process it effectively. Always ensure your document has readable text.
AI Assistant includes source citations so you can check where its answers come from in your PDF. This makes the answers trustworthy because you can always see the original text. It helps you confirm the information and ensures you are making decisions based on accurate data, not just what the AI says.
| Feature | AI Assistant | Manual Search |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Very fast, gives direct answers. | Can be slow, requires reading. |
| Complexity | Understands questions, summarizes. | Only finds exact words or phrases. |
| Multiple Documents | Can work across up to 100 documents. | Must search each document separately. |
| Insights | Provides summaries and key insights. | No automatic summaries or insights. |
| Source Verification | Links directly to sources in PDF. | User must find context manually. |