Adobe’s new Acrobat Studio places your PDFs and AI assistants in one place

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Adobe is introducing a new platform that weaves together Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Express and artificial intelligence (AI) automation in a single window, the idea being to consolidate PDF documents, web pages and multiple tools into a hub. Adobe envisions Acrobat Studio, which also spawns its own subscription, as a collective that allows users to find value from creating specific workplaces where PDFs form the foundation of conversational knowledge hubs, with customisable AI Assistants to draw information, answers or recommendations alongside the company’s Express creativity platform, PDF management tools, and the Firefly AI powered image and video generation options.

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Acrobat Studio will be priced at $24.99 per month (or ₹1,357 in India) for individuals and $29.99/month for teams (that’s priced at ₹2,969 per license, in India). Adobe calls this as “early access pricing”, and it isn’t clear for now if this will increase after this offer ends on October 31. This now sits alongside Acrobat Standard ($12.99 per month) and Acrobat Pro ($19.99 per month), and the exclusive functionality includes an Acrobat AI Assistant as well. Adobe says anyone who is currently subscribed to any of these plans, can upgrade.

There are specific use-cases that may draw value from the Acrobat Studio subscription, with a proposition for students to piece together their notes into study guides and also able to quickly generate precise citations from their sources. Another possible use case could be relevant for travellers, who may be able to draw upon Acrobat Studio to collect location reviews, itineraries or recommendations and have AI Assistants help them plan the vacation. Or use Express tools to transform data into infographics or visual assets.

“Acrobat Studio is the place where your best work comes together, uniting the productivity of Acrobat, the creative power of Adobe Express and the value of AI to empower you to work smarter and faster. We’re reinventing PDF for modern work, so whatever you need to get done, you can do that with Acrobat,” says Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president, Document Product Group at Adobe, in a briefing of which HT was a part.

PDF Spaces will also allow users to also add specific websites and webpages to the collection of files and documents, for more information. Adobe says that users will have the flexibility to assign AI Assistants in PDF Spaces with specific roles, such as that of an instructor, or analyst, or entertainer, which will form the baseline personality for how they collate and present information, answer user questions and deploy reasoning to suggest further aspects worth exploring.

Sharing should be easy too, the company promises, insisting entire PDF Spaces, including personalised AI Assistants, can be shared with colleagues, customers and classmates. At this time, Acrobat Studio is available only in English, worldwide.

Adobe’s Acrobat Studio and its focused proposition competes, in varying degrees, with Google’s NotebookLM that can also behave as a virtual assistant capable of summarising, explaining, and answering questions based on uploaded documents (these can be PDFs, Docs, Slides, Microsoft 365 files, or web pages), and also includes a “podcast-style” Audio Overview features. While Google unlocks NotebookLM with the entry spec AI Pro plan ₹1,950 per month), you’ll need the top-tier AI Ultra plan ( ₹24,500 per month) to unlock higher usage limits.

If the focus is on just writing and assistance with information, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Canvas and Google Gemini Canvas also have areas of strength with wider document support and Google Docs sync respectively. It must be noted that the Canvas propositions from Google and OpenAI are more focused on coding tasks as well, something Adobe isn’t promising.

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