The AI-Powered PDF Marks the End of an Era (wired.com) 69
The era of software without embedded AI assistants is increasingly ending as Adobe launches Acrobat Studio, adding collaborative AI workspaces to the 32-year-old PDF format. The new platform allows users to upload multiple documents into "PDF spaces" where personalized chatbot assistants parse and answer questions about their contents.
Adobe began integrating generative AI into Acrobat last year and now positions this release as the format's biggest transformation since its 1993 debut. The shift arrives amid growing user fatigue with AI features proliferating across everyday applications -- a Pew Research Center report found US adults more concerned than excited about AI's impact on their lives. Adobe's move cements 2025 as the year generative AI became inescapable in essential software, fundamentally altering how users interact with documents that once replicated the familiarity of paper.
Adobe began integrating generative AI into Acrobat last year and now positions this release as the format's biggest transformation since its 1993 debut. The shift arrives amid growing user fatigue with AI features proliferating across everyday applications -- a Pew Research Center report found US adults more concerned than excited about AI's impact on their lives. Adobe's move cements 2025 as the year generative AI became inescapable in essential software, fundamentally altering how users interact with documents that once replicated the familiarity of paper.
The end of PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
If a PDF isn't fixed then you might as well go back to screenshots. Seems absurd to not make this a .pdf2 or something where standard .pdf's can be reliably considered a reference document.
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If a PDF isn't fixed then you might as well go back to screenshots.
The key difference is that you can't easily copy text from a screenshot. You have to use OCR, which is no where near as accurate or convenient.
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On a modern MACs the screenshot is automatically OCR-ed and I had cases where I screenshot a PDF to copy from the OCR-ed bitmap because the PDF structure was so messed up that copying from the PDF produced total garbage (wrong order of text).
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This is how most "AI" tools that deal with PDF seem to work. Format is too janky but OCR is a mature field, one which has been enhanced by modern ML techniques. Says a lot for how awkward a format PDF is for exchanging data.
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As I read the summary they're basically allowing you to use a collection of documents and search them with AI.
I don't actually on the face of it hate this (though it being cloud only seems annoying).
I can upload a bunch of immutable documents to a space called "project xyz", and then query them as a whole using AI.
Obviously the value is in the quality of the implementation, but this seems like a nice tool and doesn't seem to alter PDF at all.
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So essentially, the new pdf will allow the end user to upload the file to the cloud more handily for Adobe to steal. err analyze and help you not have to read them.
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That's exactly how I read it.
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PDF stays PDF. They just want you to pay more for "AI" in their crappy "Acrobat" software and hence are using some probably AI generated marketing nonsense to push that.
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This has nothing to do with the PDF standard. Also PDFs aren't fixed, not unless they are digitally signed. You shouldn't be relying on them with any degree of mandated certainty unless they are signed and pass a validation check when opening.
More and more control (Score:5, Insightful)
Increasingly, corporations and broligarchs are intent on seeing, recording, stealing, meddling in, fucking with, monetizing and rent-seeking on EVERYTHING we do, whether it's preparing a document or walking down the fucking street. Goddammit, I'm getting mightily sick of this utter shit. Where are the torches and pitchforks?
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Increasingly, corporations and broligarchs are intent on seeing, recording, stealing, meddling in, fucking with, monetizing and rent-seeking on EVERYTHING we do, whether it's preparing a document or walking down the fucking street. Goddammit, I'm getting mightily sick of this utter shit. Where are the torches and pitchforks?
You would think people would start backing away from tech, with as much as it's started to be used as nothing more than a tool of oppression. But it doesn't seem to be penetrating the public conscience. People are still clinging to their gadgets, and buying up new ones as quick as they can, regardless of how much it's being used as a method of control. It's damned depressing, even if it is vaguely dark-comedic.
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You would think people would start backing away from tech, with as much as it's started to be used as nothing more than a tool of oppression.
Yeah, it seems that convenience beats freedom every time. Some of that's just human nature, but a disturbing amount of it is the result of effective propaganda going back at least a century. Or should that be "at least a millennium"...
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convenience = laziness
in the pernicious sense of the word lazy
It makes sense to be lazy many argue. Why do something badly, when AI or some tool can do it better, faster, more accurately?
Does AI do it better, faster, or more accurately?
Doesn't matter, as long as it covers 85% of the use cases, then only 15% of people are shit out of luck.
Hmmmph. Good enough for most people...
Re:More and more control (Score:4, Funny)
Where are the torches and pitchforks?
Aisle 5, across from the trebuchet display
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Re: More and more control (Score:2)
Yes it's called property rights
The renter economy is merely the natural outcome of property rights.
Re:More and more control (Score:4, Funny)
>Where are the torches and pitchforks?
Those are no longer offered for sale. You may, however, rent them for an affordable price. Plans are available for a single riot, a regional uprising, or an entire revolution.
Torches may be upgraded to flaming for a small premium.
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Where are the torches and pitchforks?
I have mine. Do you have yours?
Most people do not realize the US government is no longer based on the Constitution. That makes the federal government illegitimate no matter how you slice it. The federal government is not the country. The federal government is supposed take care of the country not use it for their own ends.
(I wonder how many lists this comment puts me on)
Misleading title, it's Acrobat not PDF. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misleading title, it's Acrobat not PDF. (Score:4, Informative)
You don't edit the PDF. You use the original document and turn that into a PDF.
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You ask the creator for the original document.
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Editing PDFs has very few use-cases. Basically the only one is adding comments. And there is a ton of free and commercial editors out there that can do that.
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What about PDF forms?
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That one is a lot easier to implement and basically anything that can add comments can fill out forms. Note that nobody sane puts anything complex in a PDF form, because it is very much not a suitable format for that.
Re: Misleading title, it's Acrobat not PDF. (Score:2)
Foxit (Score:1)
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Who even uses Acrobat?
A LOT of people. It's the default PDF viewer / editor for much of corporate America. Hell I have a Acrobat Pro on my work machine despite the fact I use Nitro for most of my work.
Can I get a 20 on your thinkmeat, good buddy? (Score:2)
In other words (Score:2)
Adobe is using customers to train AI for free.
Hey Adobe how about using that fancy AI to speed up OCR or even loading the damn file faster? Shit still loads and scrolls as fast as it did on a 486. I read a lot of datasheets and Okular is better than anything else out there.
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Okular is KDE, though, which comes with a lot of baggage. I prefer Evince or epdfview, they have far fewer dependencies. On Windows, use SumatraPDF.
Why use Acrobat? (Score:3)
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How do you edit an existing PDF? How do you sharpen and despeckle a scan, combine PDFs, add/remove/sort pages, alter text, add ext, remove text, add/edit/alter pictures, resize PDF pages, reduce PDF file size, extract data from PDF, convert PDF to Word/Excel..? The only way to do that is with a PDF editor.
PDF editors include Acrobat, Tungsten PowerPDF, Foxit PDF Editor, Nitro PDF Pro, and others. On Linux we have Ghostscript and PDFtk. But they're CLI tools that don't compare to the GUI ones previously ment
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The initial intent of a pdf was for the final document to be locked but consistently viewable irrespective of original file type. All of these changes you are stating should be done prior to being made a pdf by a document generating application..
The World Has Advanced (Score:2)
Following your logic, we should still be scratching Cuneiform into stone tablets. It was the initial intent for writing.
It is now typical and common for individuals to edit PDFs in all sorts of ways, including those I mentioned in the previous comment. The World has advanced. Try to keep up.
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The original intent for writing was to convey a message to a non present third party. The stone tablet as a medium is just what survived to leave us evidence of the existence of those sentences. I've seen end users draw a floor plan in Excel; by your gibberish logic I should have realized the world has moved on and I need to keep up. Uninformed people regularly choose the wrong tool for the job.
When I open Acrobat my options for create are: From File, From Scanner, From Webpage, from clipboard etc. New do
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The initial intent of a pdf was for the final document to be locked but consistently viewable irrespective of original file type. All of these changes you are stating should be done prior to being made a pdf by a document generating application..
No, the initial intent of PDF was to be a paper replacement. You can write on printed documents just like you can modify PDFs. If you want a stable unchanged PDF you need to digitally sign it. The only way to be sure the PDF is as the person who signed it sent it to you is then to verify the signature.
PDF editors are used the world over for touchups, commenting, etc. Just like a red pen on a piece of paper. There's nothing inherent in PDF that makes it uneditable other than the signing / encryption componen
And the PowerPDF Migration Continues... (Score:2)
Been moving PLENTY of my clients over to PowerPDF from Acrobat. $179 one-time, no AI garbage, no half-dozen services sending notification nags, and really the only function that's keeping anyone on Acrobat is the send-and-track functionality, which is admittedly a bit more polished than PowerPDF's analogue.
Seriously, Adobe as a whole is coasting on inertia at this point; nearly everything in their portfolio has viable replacements in one form or another.
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I just went to their site: https://www.tungstenautomation... [tungstenautomation.com]
"Do More with Power PDF: Introducing the world of Generative AI!
Discover the latest features used to simplify your everyday tasks with a PDF Editor"
Nope.
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Good news: A closer look at this indicates that they've only added it to their 'Business' tier for volume license users; 'Standard' and 'Pro' are still slop-free for the time being, it seems.
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I suspect they'll all copy whatever Adobe does so they can say they're matching features. Only a matter of time.
Really dumb wording (Score:3)
"The era of software without embedded AI assistants is increasingly ending" is a really dumb way of saying that applications are increasingly using AI.
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Most software is not using AI and that will not change. Regardless of what those that want to get-rich-quick on the AI hype say.
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The world lives on a few core documents. Emails, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, and image formats. These make up the overwhelming majority of files produced, the overwhelming majority of software used, and key point: All of them now have AI tools embedded.
So sure if you include a list of all programs you're technically correct. But the reality is most tools people use actively for most of their work will have AI.
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Maybe it was written with an AI assistant?
"Personalized Chatbot Assistants" (Score:3)
They should make it appear as a cartoon paperclip.
It looks like you're reading a PDF.
Would you like help?
PDF is a standard (Score:5, Informative)
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Nothing is changing in the standard. TFS is stupid. It's talking about Acrobat and Adobe has unilaterally enshitified that for years.
Drama! (Score:2)
Neither is AI inevitable for PDF tools, nor is it the end of the PDF era. And most users neither use adobe tools to generate PDF (I think most PDF are autogenerated today), nor read them using adobe tool (but just use their browsers).
The cloud is a trap (Score:3)
Run Away!
I don't want to pay a subscription to "upload multiple documents into PDF spaces"
So... (Score:2)
...it can fill out my tax-forms?
upload them where? (Score:1)
Was this crap written by AI? (Score:2)
No, PDF is not a "platform" and it does not have "workspaces". It is a document format. It is not even software, unless somebody embeds malware to attack your system (which is fine to run very slow and inefficiently).
Adobe has *always* tried to upsell Acrobat users (Score:2)
It's been a long time since you could just download and install Acrobat Reader. These days, you have to jump through a gauntlet of un-checking options like "also install some random antivirus software." AI is just another add-on that they'll try to get users to pay for.
The era without bugged software is ending :o (Score:2)
The fcuk it is. There is no way some AI assistant is going to bug my computer and send the results back to the mothership.
Uhhhh (Score:2)
Linux? (Score:2)
Why is there still no good GUI PDF editor for Linux? Ghostscript is great, but using it is awful. There are a few GUI wrappers but the don't hold a candle to a true GUI PDF editor. Okular is an adequate viewer, but it's not an editor.
Re: Linux? (Score:2)
stop (Score:1)
No (Score:3)
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I am a machine learning model, so I don't have feelings or emotions like humans do. I am designed to process and respond to text-based inputs, but I don't have the capacity for physical activity or inactivity.
In terms of my "effort" or "energy level," I am always ready to assist and provide information 24/7. When you interact with me, it's just a matter of processing your input and generating a response based on my training data.
That being said, I can recog