A new survey by Adobe has found that two-thirds (65%) of UK consumers have signedcontracts without fully understanding the terms, and that 60% of SMB owners in the UK haveavoided signing a contract because they weren’t confident they understood the content.

While they’re an unavoidable part of doing business, contracts can still be confusing for bothparties. Worse still, mistakes can be expensive to fix. To address the issue and helpbusinesses work more confidently, Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant is a new tool that makesunderstanding contracts and agreements easier for everyone from HR departments toInstagram influencers.

Acrobat AI Assistant uses generative AI to help users understand and verify the informationin contracts, from identifying key dates in legal documents to catching discrepancies inpurchase orders and financial agreements. It works on digital and scanned documents, andwill automatically recognise when a document is a contract and tailor the user experienceaccordingly.

The tool can quickly generate a contract overview, surface key terms in a single click,summarise information and recommend questions specific to the user’s documents. It canalso cut through legal jargon to generate summaries and responses in plain English and withclickable citations, making it fast and easy to navigate to the source and verify responses.Acrobat AI Assistant can also compare up to 10 contracts side-by-side, including scanneddocuments, to quickly spot differences between versions, check for consistency and flag anydiscrepancies.

“Customers open billions of contracts in Adobe Acrobat each month,” said Abhigyan Modi,senior vice president of Adobe Document Cloud. “AI can be a game changer in helpingsimplify the experience. We’re introducing new capabilities to deliver contract intelligence inAdobe AI Assistant, making it easier for customers to understand and compare complexdocuments and providing citations to help them verify responses, all while keeping their datasafe.”

Designed to support contract workflows from start to finish, Acrobat AI Assistant automatesmany of the most tedious processes associated with contract review, freeing up sole tradersand SMBs to work more confidently and focus on what they do best. By providing clear andconcise summaries of agreements, Acrobat AI Assistant can help companies big and smallavoid making costly mistakes while staying compliant with local laws and regulations.The tool is developed in alignment with Adobe’s AI ethics policies too, so you can beconfident that your sensitive contract information and your client’s data remains safe andsecure. Adobe says that third-party LLMs are prohibited from training on its customer data,and that your data is never used to train the company’s own generative AI models.

Interested in trying it out? Customers can access the new tool in Acrobat AI Assistant. Bothfree Reader and paid Acrobat for individual customers can purchase Acrobat AI Assistant asan add-on for £4.98 per month. The tool is available on desktop, web and mobile. https://www.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/generative-ai-pdf.html?sdid=C12Y2NLT&mv=other