Have you ever tried reading a 200-page research paper and given up on the 5th page?
Honestly, we have all been there. Whether it’s a dense academic paper, a detailed 90-slide business report, or a lengthy user manual, PDFs give you a hard time. Annual reports, mainly from the large corporations, can have an average of 186 pages, as stated in a report of the FTSE 350 Companies. Even the user manuals, especially those published by Audi A3, can take approximately 11 hours and 45 minutes to read.
Enter AI. When you have tools that summarize lengthy PDFs with the help of AI, you get essential portions quickly. These tools function like super smart assistants that read, understand and bring out the core points of the PDF on your behalf. This makes reading documents less painful and saves time.
In this blog, you will learn how AI-powered PDF summarization happens and a step-by-step guide to summarize PDFs using one of the best AI PDF tools. So, let’s dig in.
What is AI-powered PDF summarization?
Before we head to the steps to summarize PDFs, getting the basics right is essential. AI summarization is the mechanism by which you can turn long-form documents and content into bite-sized insights with the help of artificial intelligence. Here are the two ways to approach AI-powered PDF summarization:
- Extractive summarization: The AI scans the whole document and lifts crucial portions. So, there’s no editing. You won’t get anything customized in extractive summarization. Indeed, it is a fast approach, but it may sound robotic.
- Abstractive summarization: This is a more innovative approach where AI reads the document, understands it and rephrases the content in a humanized format to make more sense. After scanning your PDF document, abstractive summarization identifies the key sections, uses NLP to understand the context and generates a digestible summary.
How does AI summarize a PDF?
AI PDF summarizers use certain technological mechanisms to connect the dots and help you with crisp briefs of lengthy PDFs. Here’s what goes on:
- OCR: Optical Character Recognition or OCR scans the images of a document and produces text in a digestible format.
- NLP: Natural Language Processing helps the AI tool understand what the PDF document is all about. It also figures out the tone, style, and language.
- Summary generation: These tools either choose an abstractive or an extractive approach to craft a summary.
- Structurization: After AI PDF summarizer tools have figured out what the document is all about, it lays its hands on imparting a readable structure to the summary.
- Output: While some tools generate only a summary, some others customize responses according to your needs.
Step-by-step guide: Summarizing a PDF using Copilot.live
Now, you have a dense PDF file glaring at you and are looking for an efficient AI PDF tool to do the heavy lifting. You have Copilot.live, which functions like a super-intelligent assistant to help you with long documents. Here’s precisely how you can use Copilot.live to turn PDF files into bite-sized sections.
Step 1: Head to Copilot.live
Open your browser and visit Copilot.live. Register in just two steps - give the necessary information and you’re already inside Copilot.live.
Step 2: Upload PDF
Check out the tools section of Copilot.live and head to ‘Chat with PDF’. Upload a PDF file or drag and drop it. You can also paste the link to a research document for proper analysis.
Step 3: Ask questions
Copilot.live has some suggestions that align with the PDF document you’ve uploaded. You can either stick to those questions or devise questions to solve your doubts. Here, you chat with the PDF file and help the tool get what you’re saying.
Step 4: Dig deeper
The real magic happens when you dig deep. Keep on asking relevant and relatable questions until you’re satisfied. Since Copilot.live remembers context, you don’t have to start from scratch whenever you ask a new question.
Step 5: Export information
Now that you’ve got what you were looking for from the PDF, it’s time to export the information and save it in a readable format. An interesting factor about Copilot.live is that whenever you talk about the same PDF, you don’t need to upload it and let the tool analyse it.
Top 3 tools to summarize a PDF using AI
Not all AI PDF summarizing tools offer the same results. Here are the top 3 AI PDF tools that are actually good and give you the best results.
1. Copilot.live
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This is an all-rounder where you upload a PDF, wait for the tool to scan it, and ask questions to get the result. The side-by-side view of the tool helps you find important portions with ease. Get instant answers and dive deep into the different sections of a document or a research paper with Copilot.live in just a few easy steps.
Why is Copilot.live the best?
- Clean and easy-to-use interface.
- Handles elaborate research papers, whitepapers, legal documents and business reports.
- Considers follow-up questions.
2. SciSummary
If you’re a science geek and working on a scientific research study, SciSummary can be your best support and guide. The tool is specifically designed for researchers who deal with too many science-based theories and get drowned in citations.
Why is SciSummary the best?
- The tool perfectly combines ML models and the latest LLMs to provide AI-based summaries.
- This is a perfect tool for students, researchers and technicians.
- It offers different summary styles for tailored responses.
3. Scholarcy
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Another significant tool that tackles your heavy-duty tasks of dealing with PDFs is Scholarcy. It scans, reads, highlights and turns your PDF documents into flashcards. Instead of just summarizing PDFs, Scholarcy breaks them into digestible portions, making it easy to review the sections for better exam prep quickly.
Why is Scholarcy the best?
- You get autogenerated summary flashcards.
- Scholarcy jumps straight to the key points and concepts while highlighting them.
- The organised library helps you keep track of the documents.
Benefits of AI PDF summarization
AI summarization is a powerful and smart move. Whether you’re reading a research paper filled with jargon or gathering insights from a PDF, AI has your back. Here’s how AI PDF summarization tools can help you:
- With AI PDF summarization tools, you don’t need to read 100 pages only to understand just one paragraph. These tools will do such heavy lifting.
- AI PDF summarization tools allow you to research multiple documents simultaneously and gather insights from them. These tools scan various documents and filter out everything to create a brief.
- Some PDFs are written in the most complicated manner and filled with jargon. AI PDF summarizer tools simplify these. From breaking down the chunky paragraphs to developing understandable insights, these tools have your back.
- AI PDF summarizers make documents easier to digest and help people with learning differences and language barriers.
Use cases of PDF summarization in real life
These AI PDF summarizer tools are not just restricted to any tech industry or research students. These are the different industries where AI PDF summarizer tools can be a pro and boost productivity.
- Students struggle with PDFs and research papers. This is where AI PDF summarizer tools help. It scans the PDFs, understands the context and delivers insights that align with your research.
- Generally, legal documents are lengthy and tedious. Here, AI PDF summarizers break down legal contracts into summaries that actually make sense.
- Going through businesses' annual reports and user manuals is another tedious task. Here, the AI summarizers finish the work in just a few minutes.
Conclusion
The thought of going through a dense PDF scares you. But you can quickly deal with these PDFs with AI PDF summarizer tools. All you need to do is upload the PDF, let AI scan it, understand it, and chat with the PDF document. AI summarizer tools are not a replacement. Instead, they are a medium to get your work done faster and more wisely.
