Adobe launches Acrobat Spaces, a free AI-powered study tool for students

Adobe Acrobat has greatly catered to professionals with its recent AI features. Now, the company is turning its attention to students by making Acrobat more useful with the release of a new AI tool called Acrobat Spaces. The tool will allow students to create presentations, flash cards and quizzes from study materials such as PDFs, links and notes.

With the launch, the creative suite company is looking to compete with other AI tools like Google’s NotebookLM, Goodnotes and Turbo AIall of which allow students to upload documents to create different kinds of study material. To gain traction, Adobe is making Adobe Acrobat Spaces free and hosting it at a separate URL. Additionally, users can get started with Acrobat Spaces without signing in.

To use Spaces, students can upload all kinds of documents, including PDFs, Docs, PowerPoint, Excel, URLs, handwritten notes, and transcript files, and then create different study materials like flashcards, mind maps, quizzes, podcasts, and editable presentations powered by Adobe Express. They can also create study guides and maps to navigate their way around a course.

The company previously added the ability to create two-person AI podcasts from documents in Acrobat last month. This feature is now being extended to the student tool, allowing users to listen to the topics they are studying.

Students will also have access to the chat option to ask the AI-powered assistant questions. Adobe said the assistant builds on its knowledge of uploaded documents to reduce the chance of error. The company noted that it has developed the product by testing it with 500 students and various groups of students from universities such as Harvard, Berkeley and Brown.

Charlie Miller, VP of Education at Adobe, told TechCrunch after a call that while there are existing tools for studying, Adobe wants to create a one-stop shop for students to read and create material.

“Students are already starting in Acrobat to consume these documents and read all of their course material. What we’ve heard over and over again, they like it as a one-stop shop or study hub. When they’re already opening Acrobat to read these PDFs, they can just hit create flashcards or create a study space,” he added.