Our ChatGPT Chat PDF Review: Is It Right For Your Needs?

OpenAI recently introduced a new feature for ChatGPT that allows users to upload PDFs for ChatGPT to process and analyze. Users can then ask questions in natural language and ChatGPT will respond with an answer. This way, users can interact directly with the content of a document without having to manually search through it or manually extract information.

Our ChatGPT Chat PDF Review: Is It Right For Your Needs?
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Nov 21, 2023 08:09 AM
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OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) recently rolled out a new way to interact and chat with your PDF documents using natural language processing. It aims to help individuals improve comprehension, save time, and effectively collaborate with team members.
But is it really the best option out there?
In this My AskAI guide, we’ll review ChatGPT’s Chat PDF feature and offer our best alternative for you to explore. We’ll cover features, use cases, pricing, and more to help you decide if the tool is the right one for your needs.
Let’s dive in.

What Is ChatGPT’s New ‘Chat PDF’ Feature?

OpenAI recently introduced a new feature for ChatGPT that allows users to upload PDFs for ChatGPT to process and analyze. Users can then ask questions in natural language and ChatGPT will respond with an answer. This way, users can interact directly with the content of a document without having to manually search through it or manually extract information.
ChatGPT’s Chat PDF feature is currently in beta and is exclusively available to ChatGPT Plus members. Unfortunately, there’s no update yet on when this functionality will be available to everyone.
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It’s important to mention that OpenAI has faced some backlash for training its models on copyrighted work. So, if you’re using ChatGPT to analyze your documents, you need to be mindful of which documents you use and especially how you use the results you generate from them.

Who is ChatGPT’s Chat PDF Feature For?

ChatGPT’s chat PDF feature will be useful for anyone who handles large documents and would like to spend less time analyzing them manually.
This might include:
  • Students: The Chat PDF feature can help students better understand everything from research papers to textbooks. For example, a student can ask ChatGPT to explain a confusing concept, summarize a research paper, or generate a list of key takeaways. Students will be able to accelerate their learning by finding and extracting specific information quickly.
  • Researchers: Similar to students, the Chat PDF feature can help researchers quickly draw clear conclusions from their PDF documents. For example, a researcher can ask ChatGPT to highlight trends in a dataset, compare and contrast various research findings, or generate a valid hypothesis for their next research project.
  • Professionals: ChatGPT can help business professionals save time going through multiple documents and effectively increase their productivity. For example, a business professional can ask ChatGPT to generate a report based on sales data, extract key data from a business proposal, translate a legal contract into another language, or generate a meeting summary.
  • Creative writers: The Chat PDF feature can also benefit those in the creative space by helping them generate new ideas, develop character backstories, and explore different plot lines. Creative writers can also use it to translate their work into different languages.

Use Cases of ChatGPT’s Chat PDF Feature

1. Extracting information

Extracting text from large PDFs is very easy with this new feature. The high document size limit combined with ChatGPT’s ability to process large amounts of data mean that businesses can extract key information from even the longest documents in a fraction of the time.
Plus, the tool’s NLP capabilities mean you can extract information even when you aren’t 100% sure what you’re looking for. For example, if you’re analyzing a report, you could use the prompt “extract action items” to pull out recommendations.

2. Summarizing information

Extracting information is helpful, but this feature can also help you understand that information quickly by generating summaries. Rather than spending hours manually skimming through a document, you can now get a summary of the main points in an instant.
This is great for quickly understanding the contents of a PDF, and it’s also helpful when you need to present information to someone else.

3. Repurposing information

Additionally, you can use this tool to repurpose content for different formats. For example, if you have a document containing product specs, you can ask ChatGPT to extract the specs and turn them into a table or generate website headlines for better readability. This makes it easier to find and share the most important information without having to manually copy-paste anything.

4. Document translation

ChatGPT currently supports 50+ languages, including Chinese, Arabic, French, German, and English as well as a number of programming languages. That means you can upload and analyze text in any supported language, then have it translated into another.
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You won’t have to worry about your PDF data losing context during translation because ChatGPT uses advanced NLP technology to preserve the original meaning.

How Much Does ChatGPT’s Chat PDF Feature Cost?

ChatGPT’s chat PDF feature is currently in beta and is only available with a ChatGPT Plus subscription ($20/month).

Pros and Cons of ChatGPT’s Chat PDF Feature

Pros

  • Accurate understanding of context in a PDF document
  • Quick document summarization
  • Highlights main ideas in a document
  • Generates new information (from your prompts) based on PDF data
  • Real-time translation of PDF content (more than 50 languages available)
  • Reduce errors and inaccuracies in document extraction

Cons

  • Still in beta and only included in the ChatGPT Plus subscription
  • May struggle to handle complex formatting and non-text elements in your PDF files
  • Potential security threat as OpenAI may collect information about you through the messages you input and the files you upload
  • Lack of accurate understanding of domain-specific jargon

Best Alternative to ChatGPT’s New ‘Chat PDF’ Feature: My AskAI

My AskAI is a reliable chat PDF tool that transforms your static PDFs into searchable wells of information and insight. Instead of searching for specific information manually, you can ask questions in natural language, and your My AskAI will provide you with relevant, unique answers generated using the data in your PDF.
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Training your My AskAI is easy—just upload a document (PDF, CSV, DOC, DOCX, etc.) or integrate a document repository (Notion or Google Drive) and your My AskAI will train itself in minutes. You can also link to a website or sitemap for automatic content indexing.
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Once connected, My AskAI will automatically generate responses to any of your questions as long as the answers are in the data). This helps limit “hallucinations”—inaccurate results that are common with tools like ChatGPT. You can also customize the response style based on your goals to make sure you get the depth you need.

My AskAI Key Features

  • AI Bot Customization: You can personalize almost every aspect of your AI chatbot, including its appearance, answer style, and tone.
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  • Embed Your AI Bot: Easily integrate your AI chatbot onto your website or connect it with third-party platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, Zapier, and more.
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  • Summarize content: The summarize mode allows you to pull out key insights from your PDFs, Word docs, TXT files, or webpages.  You can even choose how you want your content summarized (e.g., short report, one-pager, timeline, or action plan).
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  • Analytics: Access your AI chatbot’s usage analytics for insights into common customer questions, knowledge gaps, and more.
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  • Share AskAI: You can share your AI chatbot through a unique link. Anyone who has your link will be able to access your AskAI bot. This is great for team collaboration.
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Guaranteed Security: My AskAI keeps your files in an isolated container behind powerful encryption (AES-256) so that your data stays secure.
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My AskAI Pricing

My AskAI offers a free forever plan that gives you one AI chatbot, 10 document uploads, 50 questions per month, and customizable tones and answer styles.
If you want to expand these limitations and access advanced features like Slack and WhatsApp integration, analytics, and lead collection, you can subscribe to one of the following plans:
  • Hobby ($13.30/month)
  • Pro ($66/month)
  • Beast ($666/month)
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Across all plans, you can access web chat support, Zapier integration, and the ability to share your AI chatbot via link or embed.

ChatGPT’s New ‘Chat PDF’: Key Takeaways

It’s not a stretch to anticipate that ChatGPT will positively impact PDF processing for organizations across a wide range of industries.
While ChatGPT’s Chat PDF feature shows great promise, it's still not widely available. Luckily, alternatives like My AskAI are available to streamline PDF processing today. Our tool is open to anyone, and offers a generous free tier to get you started.

Conclusion

Manually searching through multiple PDF documents for the information you need can be extremely time-consuming. That’s why ChatGPT’s Chat PDF feature can be a saving grace to many professionals. But, as it stands, this feature is limited to select customers.
With My AskAI, you don’t need a Plus plan to experience the benefits of a chat PDF tool. It can instantly provide you with the insights you need, while keeping your data secure. Just upload your documents, choose your response style, and ask away.
Ready to get started? Sign up for our free plan today to experience a more efficient workflow.

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Written by

Alex Rainey
Alex Rainey

Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.