People often ask me what to actually do with AI. Well, here’s an idea: Give it a product manual, a document, or something else you’re interested in and chat about it.
We’ve seen a lot of enthusiasm around this concept lately. Microsoft is pushing the concept hard as part of its paid Copilot Pro service, Nvidia released a tool that will let you explore it on a PC with Nvidia graphics hardware, and Google is testing integration of Gemini in Google Docs.
The idea itself is actually pretty magical: Just asking a document questions rather than trying to search or dig through it for something is an incredibly useful task for AI.
But you don’t have to lean on any particular platform or paid service to pull it off. You’re about to meet to a tool that offers an easy introduction to the concept of chatting with documents. It’s something you can use for free this minute, no matter what other services you rely on or what kind of device is in front of you—no account creation or app installation required.
Be the first to find all sorts of little-known tech treasures with Chris’s Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. One useful new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday!
Your own personal AI assistant
➜ The document-chatting resource most people have yet to discover is a web-based service called ChatPDF.
Unlike other similar options, ChatPDF has a convenient free tier that doesn’t need any accounts or configuration and isn’t directly tied to any other platform. You can upload up to two documents each day, and they can be up to 120 pages long and up to 10 MB in size. That’s quite impressive in comparison to similar services’ free plans.
⌚ And it couldn’t be much simpler to figure out. You can give the site a file and start asking questions in just 10 to 20 seconds, in fact.
First, just open the ChatPDF website at ChatPDF.com in your web browser on your computer or phone. (And note that you will find apps with this same name in Google’s Play Store and in Apple’s App Store. Despite sharing a name, however, they aren’t the same service. I recommend using this specific service’s website in your web browser, even on a phone.)
Add in any document file. Perhaps it’s a product manual, a book, or a document.
- This can be a PDF, but you can also provide other types of files, like Word documents (DOCX) and PowerPoint presentations (PPTX).
- The file should be under 120 pages and under 10 MB in size to fit within the free limits.
- Just keep in mind you are uploading the document to this service. The service says your documents will be stored securely and kept private, but I would avoid providing especially sensitive business files or private financial documents, even so.
Once it’s uploaded, you’ll see the document alongside a chat box. You can then ask questions about things in the document, and you’ll get answers—with convenient little footnotes that show you exactly where ChatPDF got the information.
You could have a discussion about technical matters in a product manual, the themes in a story, or whatever else—depending on the document you provided.
- You can use ChatPDF for free on the ChatPDF website from any phone or computer.
- If you need to go beyond the service’s free offering, a $140 per year subscription unlocks unlimited PDFs—and there are other similar paid services out there, too—but for up to two documents a day and the aforementioned size limits, you won’t have to pay a thing.
- As far as privacy goes, ChatPDF promises it won’t share your files with anyone. But, again, I still wouldn’t upload extremely sensitive documents.
Happy chatting!
Want even more productivity-boosting goodness? Check out my free Cool Tools newsletter for an an instant intro to an AI-powered supertool that transcribes your brain—and another off-the-beaten-path gem every Wednesday!
