Adobe is delving deeper into implementing AI in its most popular services, this time with a new Assistant AI for Acrobat.
The generative AI-powered conversational engine is available today in beta and will make available a host of tools to heighten how people process and understand documents in Adobe. The features will be available in Acrobat Standard, Pro Individual, and Teams subscription plans on desktop and web during the beta period at no additional cost. The AI features are even coming to Reader, the company’s free PDF viewer.
Some of the highlight features that will launch with the beta Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant tool include:
“Generative AI offers the promise of more intelligent document experiences to transform information overload into actionable knowledge and professional-looking content,” Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president of Adobe Document Cloud said in a statement.
“Acrobat is the de facto standard for the world’s most important documents, and the capabilities introduced today are just the beginning of the new value Adobe intends to deliver through AI Assistant,” he added.
Adobe also notes that it has implemented data security protocols into its new Acrobat service and that customer content is not stored or used for training the AI Assistant.
The company gave some examples of potential users, including project managers, sales teams, students, and social media and marketing teams. It has already released several AI services including its text-to-image generator Adobe Firefly and its AI-powered image editor app Adobe Express. Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant is an addition to the brand’s forward-looking road map.
Adobe said its plans include AI Assistant being able to work with many documents, document types, and sources, as well as upgrades in AI authoring, editing, and formatting. It will also be bringing features from Firefly and Adobe Express into AI Assistant, further increasing collaborating and document sharing, as well as making feedback more efficient.
The new AI Assistant features will be available in beta today, and will be rolling out to Reader desktop customers over the next few weeks for free. Adobe says that desktops customers will have access to all the new AI Assistant features, which will eventually be available as an add-on subscription plan after the beta ends.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.