Adobe Inc. is beefing up its Acrobat AI Assistant tool with a new artificial intelligence capability that’s focused on analyzing contracts.

Called Contract AI, it can ingest hundreds of contractual documents and analyze them in seconds, so users can understand complex terms, identify differences between agreements and verify information within them.

The Acrobat AI Assistant is a generative AI chatbot for the popular Acrobat tool, which is used to create and edit PDF files. Available as an add-on, it allows users to “chat” with their documents, get a summary of their contents, and ask questions about them in order to save time that would otherwise be spent reading through them.

A large number of contracts happen to be stored as PDF files, ranging from credit card and vendor agreements to purchase orders. Although they’re a fact of life for almost every business, and most consumers too, they tend to be extremely long and complicated, to the point that very few people will attempt to read through them properly.

Indeed, Adobe says that a recent survey found that almost 70% of consumers, 61% of knowledge workers and 62% of small business owners admit to signing contracts without properly reading through and understanding all of the terms within them.

Clearly, it would be more advantageous for those people if they did understand the things they’re agreeing to, and that’s what the new Contract AI capability sets out to achieve. Users can simply upload any new contract and immediately get a breakdown of the terms and conditions within it, in language they can understand. Moreover, they’ll be able to ask questions to find out the most relevant details within contracts, Adobe said.

For instance, a business could use Contract AI to quickly identify the most important dates in a vendor agreement, while marketers can use it to discover deliverables in their brand and advertising partnerships. Finance teams will be able to accelerate sales contract reviews, and small business owners can use it to understand what is and what isn’t covered by an insurance policy.

Adobe said the Contract AI feature means Acrobat AI Assistant will automatically identify any PDF that is a contract, and tailor its analysis of the document accordingly. It will summarize the key information within it, and recommend questions that the user might want to ask.

In every case, it will disambiguate any of the complex terminology used in contracts, spelling out exactly what things mean in clear language, making it easier for users to understand what they’re agreeing to. It also offers a comparison tool, so users can check for differences between newer and older versions of what appears to be the same contract, ensuring they don’t miss any new clauses within them.

Ray Wang of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that contracts are one of the biggest use cases for AI, because they are something that every business has to deal with. “This is a great tool for both the companies that issue contracts, and the users that must agree to them,” he said. “It will help to increase transparency over what these agreements really mean, and everyone will welcome this.”

Adobe Document Cloud Senior Vice President Abhigyan Modi said the company’s customers deal with billions of contacts in Adobe Acrobat every month. “AI can be a game-changer in helping to simplify their experience,” he said. “Contract AI makes agreements easier to understand and compare, and citations help customers to verify responses, all while keeping their data safe.”

With regard to the last point, Adobe said Acrobat AI Assistant is governed by strict data security protocols that were developed in alignment with its AI Ethics processes. As such, the company promises it will never train its generative AI models on its customers’ data, and it also prohibits third-party large language models from doing the same.

Adobe isn’t the only company looking to apply generative AI to try to help users get a better handle on their jargon-laden contracts. The e-signature software firm Docusign Inc. offers similar capabilities with its Intelligent Agreement Management platform, bolstered by its acquisition of an AI startup called Lexion last May.

Contract AI is available now to all Acrobat AI Assistant subscribers. A subscription for the add-on costs $4.99 per user per month. It’s currently available in English, though the company plans to add support for additional languages soon.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Meta AI