I tried Adobe Acrobat AI to see how it stacks up against ChatGPT

Adobe Acrobat is arguably the most popular cross-platform PDF editor, offering the free Adobe Reader and paid Acrobat Standard and Pro plans for document manipulation. With Big Tech normalizing chatting with your emails, documents, and tasks, Adobe naturally hopped on the trend and baked an AI assistant into Acrobat. The paid add-on Acrobat AI Assistant enables you to analyze PDF files, summarize contracts, ask questions, and more. Given that ChatGPT can perform similar tasks, we tested Adobe’s new AI integration to see if it’s worth the recurring fees.

Pricing and availability

Adobe’s AI is integrated into the Acrobat app (read our review) and available on mobile, desktop, and the web. While I couldn’t personally get the AI window to load in the native macOS client, the features work reliably on the web app. Whether you’re using the paid or the free version of Acrobat, accessing the AI perks requires a separate subscription that costs $8.25/£4.98 a month or $70.68/£58.90 when committing to an annual plan (with the option to pay in $5.89 monthly installments). Get Acrobal AI Assistant here.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, on the other hand, works on all major operating systems for free. While there is a daily cap on file uploads (PDF or otherwise), you can get around the limitation by copying and pasting large walls of text directly into the chatbot. To lift these restrictions altogether, you could subscribe to the $20/month Plus plan (approx £15).

Putting Acrobat’s AI to the test

According to an Adobe support document, the AI assistant in Acrobat is powered by the GPT-4o model. So, in theory, its performance should be comparable to that of ChatGPT. Both chatbots warn about potential errors and urge you to double-check sensitive details.

One of Adobe Acrobat AI’s key features is contract analysis, which automatically extracts the significant bits—such as the salary, obligations, relevant dates, etc. I tested the tool with several contracts, and it displayed the needed information correctly. It even highlights the missing details you’d typically find in a contract, such as the early termination fee, liability, and audit rights. So, not only does it neatly summarize the document’s content, but it also sheds light on absent bits you may want to inquire about before signing the contract.

What I especially love about Adobe Acrobat AI is the citations next to each bullet point in the summary. These link to the original source in the document, letting you easily jump to a specific detail’s location and check its context.

Another handy perk is the automatic follow-up questions that dynamically adapt to each contract. Instead of manually typing your inquiries, you can simply click on one of the relevant questions suggested by the chatbot. This enables you to ask about the detailed obligations, for example, without needing to formulate the inquiry on your own. You also get to ask it custom questions if the automatically generated ones don’t address your concerns.

In addition to learning more about the analyzed contract, Acrobat’s AI can generate emails based on the document’s information. This makes responding to the other party simpler and more efficient.

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How ChatGPT compares

Whether you upload a PDF file to ChatGPT or directly paste the contract’s text, the chatbot can generate key points in a comparable manner to Acrobat AT. Notably, the response doesn’t include the specialized features that Acrobat offers, such as citations and follow-up questions, so you’d have to manually search for relevant details in the original document and compose questions from scratch to receive similar answers.

What stands out to me is how fast ChatGPT is at providing answers. In contrast, Acrobat’s AI “thinks” for a couple of seconds before responding, but it excels in document analysis quality.

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Is Adobe’s AI assistant subscription worth it?

If you professionally have to deal with multiple contracts a week, then Adobe Acrobat’s AI may be worth the recurring fee. The chatbot is specifically designed to analyze documents and offers valuable insights when it detects a contract. You don’t have to program or teach it what to do.

Otherwise, if you’re only handling a few contracts every once in a while, then ChatGPT—whether you pay for it or not—is probably sufficient. In this case, you’d need to do the heavy lifting by manually guiding it, and you’d still miss out on citations. You may find custom GPTs in the app that are better optimized for contract analysis.

Ultimately, Adobe offers a more convenient experience but at a cost, while ChatGPT provides broader utility without necessarily costing you a dime. If you’re still unsure which chatbot to use for document analysis, you can try Adobe Acrobat’s AI for free and decide once the trial expires.