Recently, while studying for my exams, I decided to experiment with some AI tools that isn’t ChatGPT. I was looking for something that could help me summarise and understand papers. After I bit of researching, I came across ChatPDF. It’s a free application where you can upload a PDF file and you can ask its chatbot to ask any questions about the paper.
As explained in BlockchainNews (2023), ChatPDF uses ChatGPT technology. Besides being able to provide summaries and explanations of what is contained in the PDF, it is also able to provide academic sources to what is contained in the PDF. Based on this, one can deduce that people such as researchers and students would be considered as target audiences of this app.
Below are some things that I did with ChatPDF:
Figure 1. Asking what is an NFT according to the paper
Figure 2. Asking to list the key terms in the paper
Figure 3. Asking it to summarise the paper
I’m sure that at some point this application will go extinct as soon as ChatGPT will introduce a PDF reading functionality in its free version. However, with current free version ChatGPT you can’t upload any sort of file and ask it to read it.
So, for the time being, people like me are resorting to alternatives like ChatPDF!
As you can see from the figures above, ChatPDF seems very easy to use. Moreover, you don’t need to create an account meaning that you can use instantly as soon as you get into the application’s website. Best of all, unlike many other AI tools, this is free!
For the time being, I think this AI tool is very useful. However, I don’t think that the existence of this tool will last for long. I’m of the opinion that Microsoft, OpenAI and Google will become the main sources of AI tools in the future. What I mean by this is that, while we can access many AI tools, many of them will be bought by these companies that I just mentioned.
Have you ever used ChatPDF? Do you know any equivalents of this app? Do you think this app will exist for long? Let me know in the comments!
References
Blockchain News. (2023, September 24). What is chatpdf?. https://blockchain.news/wiki/what-is-chatpdf
The service you are referring to seems very helpful! Especially with academic articles which are often very difficult to understand, while most of it is not relevant to the reader. This could save a lot of time! I was wondering if this service generates fake sources like chatGPT does as well? That is one of the main downsides of ChatGPT.
I have come across a similar service called typeset.io, I believe this lets you ask questions as well about papers but you have access to a large database of papers. Might be helpful!
With regards to your comment about the main companies buying everything, I believe this could very well be the case indeed. However, some very specific services like maybe this one might survive!
Thanks for sharing – that indeed might come in handy for exam preparation – chat gpt 4 for the time being in europe does not have that feature, but one can make screenshots of text or graphs and it can explain very well what is in the screenshot!
Thanks for sharing Lewis. Was not yet familiar with the tools but definitely seems to come in handy when preparing for the exams or when writing ourselves a thesis. I have also being summarizing texts with the use of ChatGPT, but being able to simply upload a PDF instead of copy pasting an entire paper seems like a gamechanger. The fact that is shows the references when answering a question, makes this tool basically a more extended tool compared to ChatGPT, which unfortunately does not yet provide this solution. Interesting topic you touched upon in the final paragraph; personally I think you are right about the bigger companies acquiring the smaller innovative start-ups like ChatPDF in the future. I do, however, enjoy a diverse ecosystem where there is some healthy competition going on so I hope to see more businesses alike ChatPDF in the nearby future. Noticed that ChatPDF and multiple other tools that I have tried using require a paid version whenever uploading files that are ”too big”. Have you found yourself a solution to this issue? Once again, thanks for sharing this useful tool!
Knowing additional technologies for education is a positive thing. Sincerelly, I often struggled to comprehend papers or articles that were overly abstract or information-heavy. We now have ChatPDF. It demonstrates the effectiveness of AI in assisting readers in document scanning and skimming, as well as in generating conclusions and learnings from a particular study model. I think it will make it easier and more efficient to undertake more scientific research. I believe it will be able to do more in the future than it already is, and their use is not constrained. Of course, your blog also suggests a fantastic tool for my next master’s thesis.