What are the real world use cases for these "Chat With PDF" Apps?

For the past 9 months we have seen hundreds of new A.I. apps being built that all have this chat with your PDFs functionality. Are there really that many people that need to solve this problem all of a sudden? At first I took it as a joke given that I am not some sort of insurance analyst or whatever role that actually has this sort of need. I view it as a joke tbh because I feel like if this were a real problem then it would have been addressed pre A.I. What is your opinion on this? Is this some sort of fad where there is simply an excess of money and people are simply buying cool new toys or is this a real problem that real people need solved?

Replies

Sagar Patel
It honestly depends if the app is offering anything new or not. Some might be able to handle large pdfs, some might have an optical character recognition system in there, some might be domain specific, some might offer translation to multiple languages, some might turn pdf into audiobooks, and any other feature I might not have thought of. Those apps have a real world use case. Others who are just upload one pdf and that’s it, are more or less not worth it.
Rami - Browsingbuddies.com
@sagarpatel10 the ones that can actually handle all of the proprietary layouts in PDFs can be very valuable IMO but I just don't see how there is an insane amount of demand like the number of apps we see being built and their relatively successful MRR
Romio
here's an example. had the same doubt for a long time. but then I thought about some scenarios. I really don't like legal docs. but it is an essential part of our day-to-day life these days in one way or another. it is lengthy and most of the language is pure legal so we get bored. just upload and ask all our doubts. or it will give us snippets and pros and cons. but now the question? a subscription? na... I don't think so. it can be a pay-as-you-go model. but there are a lot of people whose main job depends on things like this, where a subscription works. but I think a lot of apps will be either acquired by other platforms or just shut down. as a standalone product - I have doubt but let's see.
Rami - Browsingbuddies.com
@romiojoseph good share me. Romio. have you met your Juliet yet?
Ken Ito 🍄
I felt like its a good idea at first, but seems to be done to death now. And recently we can do that with chatgpt anyway. Some scenarios I have used it myself: - ask a questions on documents such as bank statements, terms and conditions, contracts, etc. - give me a summary of particular research papers
Matthew Everett
The best use case may be you don't need to read thousnads of pdfs when you are researching something just ask the AI and boom, problem is solved.
Rami - Browsingbuddies.com
@matthew_everett sure but who has that many PDFs to read? what profession?
André J
Launching soon!
I think its just the start of the chat with everything era
Barry Zheng
While it might seem like a fad, I believe technology often introduces solutions before we realize the problem exists. Maybe it's not for everyone, but there might be niches where 'Chat With PDF' proves invaluable.
Haerin Wu
https://updf.com/updf-ai/, Have you ever tried AI PDF? I feel good with UPDF AI, I don't have to spend time to think about some ideas for my homework, AI offer me some inspiration and idea, even answer to my work.