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