How PDF Spaces turns documents into an AI workspace (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Most of us are completely overloaded with documents. Throughout the course of our day, we have to make sense of PDFs, presentations, web pages, user manuals, transcripts, and more. That usually means manually digging through every file to piece together the information you need. It's time-consuming and frankly, exhausting. Hi, I'm Garak, and in this video, in partnership with Adobe, we're going to show you how to use AI for document assistance with Adobe Acrobat Studio. One of the best AI workspaces for summarizing documents with citations, and an AI-powered productivity tool to help you work efficiently and effectively with all the documents you deal with every day. First, let's talk about what makes a truly effective AI document assistant. Essentially, you want one of the best AI chat tools that summarizes documents and generates citations, and one that works with almost all file types. Next, you want a tool that gives you AI summaries and pulls the main points, so you can understand how your documents relate and connect to each other. Third, you need to be able to ask questions about your documents in natural language and get intelligent and thoughtful answers directly from your material. Bonus points if it provides citations for its sources, along with reference links to the location in the document so you can easily verify the information. Fourth, it should adapt to different perspectives based on what you need, whether you're analyzing data, teaching others, or making strategic decisions. As you've probably guessed, Acrobat Studio checks all of these boxes. Let's take a look at how it works. Now, while you can access all the features we're going to be looking at in the desktop Acrobat app, I'm accessing my account through my web browser at acrobat.adobe.com. The nice thing about this is the interface is the same regardless of the operating system you're on, and you can access your files from any computer this way, not just computers where you've installed Acrobat Studio. Just be aware that you do need to have an Acrobat Studio or AI Assistant subscription to use these features we're looking at. But if you don't have them yet, you can try them for free with the link in the description. The feature we're focusing on here is PDF Spaces, which brings all of your documents together into one intelligent hub. I'll come over here and click Create a PDF Space to create a new space and so we can see how to increase productivity with AI using PDF Spaces. You can add up to 100 files of up to 600 pages each, and the types of files you can add include PDFs, Word docs, Excel files, PowerPoint presentations, and plain text files. You can drag in files from your computer, paste web links, or even add blocks of text directly. If you click on one of the Cloud services icons here, you can access files from third-party Cloud storage services like Google Drive and OneDrive. For this example, all of my files are stored on my computer, so I'll just cancel that, and I'll click Add Files to locate my files. And here on my desktop, I have a folder containing 11 different files for onboarding new employees of a fictitious company called Colvento. You can see we have some PDFs, a couple of Word files, a PowerPoint file, and here's a VTT file, which is a transcript from a YouTube video. So although these files are all related, we have a wide variety of file types. I'll just select them all, click Open, and then click Add to PDF Space. And now Acrobat is going to import and analyze each one of these documents. And after several seconds, we have our new Colvento Employee Resources PDF space. We can see the list of files we imported over here on the left. Selecting any of these shows you the actual document. But over here on the right is where we can now interact with AI Assistant about everything we just brought in. So a PDF space is not just a folder containing your related files. This is now an AI workspace that summarizes across sources, provides citations in the documents, and helps you understand what matters in this collection of files. Notice it's already included a summary area, providing us an idea of what these files contain. So let's take a look at what we can do with a PDF space. Providing us an idea of what these files contain. You can see there are also citations next to each line. And if you roll over them, you can see exactly which document this information comes from. And clicking a citation opens that document and highlights the section so you can read exactly what's there. Down here at the bottom of the window is where you can type any question or prompt about the files we brought in and chat with your documents. So maybe after creating the space, I wanted to tell me, what is the company policy on remote work? And in a few seconds, I have the summary that tells me about the remote work policy across all the documentation. Again, notice it provides citations for the information it's giving me so I can always check the original sources. Notice it also provided some follow-up prompts that I might want to use next. And because these are AI chat tools, you can continue conversationally asking follow-up questions and it'll keep track of what you're discussing from question to question. So I might follow up with, can I use my personal computer for remote work? And there's the response. So what we've built here, just by dragging in various sources, is one of the best AI workspaces for your documents. This is a knowledge hub that also increases productivity with AI workflows and summarizes, analyzes, and compares your documents in ways you might not have thought of. And you can build PDF spaces for any number of different scenarios and uses. Maybe you're in the process of leasing a property. You could create a PDF space for all the forms and contracts the property manager sends you so you can ask AI Assistant to summarize and analyze them and help check for possible red flags. Or maybe you're a business professional who needs to synthesize market research reports, user interviews, and trend analysis. Again, PDF Spaces provides you with one of the best AI platforms for summarizing documents, and it pulls insights from all of your sources in seconds. The possibilities really seem endless. Now, just to be clear about this, even though AI Assistant has general knowledge, it keeps the context focused on the content you provided. So if I ask it something like, tell me Colvento's stock price, it tells me the documents provided don't contain any of that information. So it really does provide answers from your sources with citations, and it will tell you when it doesn't have a legitimate answer to a question. Now, so far we've been using the default AI Assistant in PDF Spaces, but you can also select from other personas for specific roles. You can choose from these three existing personas of analyst, entertainer, and instructor. And you can see rolling over their names gives you a brief description of them. And you'll get different types of responses based on the persona you choose. You can even create your own personalized assistant for your PDF Spaces by choosing create your own. For this example, I'll switch to the analyst persona. And let's ask it the same question about remote work that we previously asked. What is the company policy on remote work? So same question, but this time we get this table breaking down the different aspects of the company policy. Not only that, but below the table, it gives us an analysis of emerging themes, hidden assumptions, opportunities for expanded thinking, thought provoking questions, and alternative framing. So this analyst persona is great for helping to surface questions or aspects of the information that might not have occurred to you. So we get a much more detailed breakdown of the remote work policies through this persona. And this analyst persona is great for helping to surface questions or aspects of the information that might not have occurred to you. This could be particularly useful for reviewing dense contracts and proposals. The analyst persona can break down complex legal language and highlight key terms you need to know. But you may want to try out the other personas or create your own custom persona to see what kind of information they each surface. All right, let's take a look at one more great feature of PDF Spaces, and that's generate podcast. Sometimes you don't have time to sit and read a long summary of your files. By selecting podcasts, that automatically generates two audio summaries in the form of a podcast-style conversation between two AI podcast hosts, one that covers the highlights of your documents and one that takes a deeper dive.

[00:08:47] Speaker 2: Hey, Chloe, it's great to have you here for this episode. Today, we're diving into Colvento, a company that's really built a thoughtful and supportive workplace culture.

[00:08:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, Liam, I'm looking forward to unpacking all the details. Colvento's story and their approach to providing benefits and leadership really stood out to me.

[00:09:05] Speaker 2: Hey, Chloe, glad we could sit down today to unpack this whole Colvento employee experience. It's quite a comprehensive set of documents.

[00:09:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, Liam, it really is. I mean, Colvento comes across as a pretty dynamic company, doesn't it?

[00:09:19] Speaker 1: So for those times when you don't have time to read, you can create a podcast summary. You can even use the Acrobat mobile app to listen on the go while you're driving, exercising, and so on.

[00:09:32] Speaker 2: Hey, Chloe, it's great to have you here for this episode. Today, we're diving into Colvento.

[00:09:37] Speaker 1: Use the QR code on this page to download and install the app if you don't already have it. So with PDF Spaces and Adobe Acrobat Studio, one of the best AI platforms for summarizing documents and one of the best AI workspaces for teams and file collaboration, your documents are no longer static files sitting on your hard drive or scattered in various places. Instead, they become an intelligent AI-powered workspace that provides main points, multiple perspectives, and real understanding of your content. Whether you're onboarding new employees, preparing presentations, conducting research, reviewing contracts, or just trying to make sense of all the information you deal with every day, this is how to use AI for document assistance to work smarter. PDF Spaces shows you exactly how to increase productivity with AI in everything you do. You can try Acrobat Studio out for yourself using the link in the description. And if you found this video helpful, hit the like button and subscribe for more videos like this one.