We’ve talked about AI a few times in the past, especially in the context of how it can be used as assistive technology (AT). We’ve also explored quite a few chatbots, which are AI-based apps that are designed to simulate human conversations. Typically those apps are fairly general in nature, but recently we have learned about some very interesting task-specific chatbots which focus on one particular task rather than serving as a blank conversational canvas.

ChatPDF is a free, browser-based chatbot that focuses specifically on analyzing and summarizing PDFs. This tool can be helpful for students, professionals, researchers, and anyone else who works with PDFs.

And, since PDFs are the standard format for a lot of contracts, legal documents, official government documents, and much more, pretty much all of us will be interacting with PDFs at some point in our lives.

The app can even look at multiple PDFs at once, which means that you can use it to easily compare important documents. It also operates in any language, making it a great tool to use in a bilingual province.

How the app works is fairly simple. First, you upload your document either via browser or through the Windows app, then select “Summarize this information.” The app will then generate a summary of the information contained within the document. Each summary point will also provide a clickable page reference, so you can easily navigate to the page that is being referred to. You’ll see a split view where one half of your screen is the document itself, and the other half is the summary.

But as useful as that is, the most impressive thing about this app is that you can ask it questions. For this example we will use the Fishing regulations summary for New Brunswick. This guidebook contains a lot of information, and even lifelong anglers often get confused about regulations. So, let’s say I want to know what the dates are for the trout season in the Miramichi area. I asked ChatPDF, “What is the trout season in the Miramichi area?”, within seconds it tells me that those dates are from May 1^st to September 15^th for rivers, brooks, and streams, and it also gives the dates for lakes, as well as telling me what the daily bag limit is. Not only did it give me all the information I asked for, but it also gave me other relevant details related to my query.

That is just one example of how this tool can be helpful, but the utility of this app is really only limited by your own imagination. Virtually anything that you can think of would be useful to ask, ChatPDF will find the answer. So, for those of us who don’t have the time or the ability to scour long documents for important answers, ChatPDF is a tool that you should absolutely consider trying.

ChatPDF offers a free, limited version of the app to try, and for most users the free version will probably be sufficient. But, for more advanced users, ChatPDF Plus allows for unlimited PDFs, unlimited questions, 2,000 pages/PDF, 50 PDFs/folder, and up to 32 MB per PDF. Right now, the Plus version of the app costs just under $20 CDN per month, billed yearly. To learn more about ChatPDF, click here (new window).

This post originally appeared on the AT Help Desk (new window) website.