This morning as I was reviewing a PDF document, I noticed an “AI Assistant” label on my Adobe Acrobat. As (I hope) it is normal human behavior to click on any new button that appears on the screen, and given the hype and promise of AI assistants, I instantly decided to give it a try.  

I had a slide deck to review, and the AI Assistant gave me a quick overview of what the deck was about and suggested some questions for me to try. The questions intended for me to learn more about the contents of the document and some key takeaways. Not bad!

At the risk of annoying my assistant, I decided to pose a question of my own to get to the crux of why I was reviewing the document, and I was impressed with the quick summary that it could provide instantly. Having known the document, I was also impressed with the quality of the summary. This was good!

This was getting exciting, so the next “normal” thing to do was throw more work at my assistant. I had been putting off reviewing an agreement with a new partner, and I was not sure whether their Privacy Policy aligned with the data residency requirements that I wanted - AI Assistant to the rescue. I opened the agreement and asked my AI assistant to find details from the Privacy Policy that I wanted, and there it was with references to which part of the document was used to come up with the response (so you know that your assistant is not hallucinating). Well done!  

Like many of you, I have been trying different Gen AI tools with the hope of driving improved personal productivity and outputs with the use of helpful co-pilots or assistants or coaches. Adobe’s AI assistant (while still in beta and with the warning to review the responses) is definitely a tool that I can see myself using frequently to review documents, unearth information from large documents like agreements, check if a document that I have created makes sense and delivers the intended message (at least to my AI assistant) or to just have a fun chat with my assistant while I take a break from work and have a cup of coffee.  

Is there a threat that someday AI will replace my job is still something to be pondered about, but the threat of not using AI and getting replaced by someone who has smart assistants is much higher. Please expect quicker feedback on your documents from now on ;)