Everyday AI

Which AI tool can summarize a PDF and answer questions about it?

Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) is the best free choice: upload the PDF and it answers from your sources, attributing each answer to them, and the free plan takes up to 50 sources of up to 500,000 words or 200 MB each, so a stack of reports fits in one notebook. For a single file, the free tiers of Claude and ChatGPT read PDFs too; Claude takes up to 20 files per chat and PDFs up to 1,000 pages. If the PDF is already open in Microsoft Edge, its Copilot will summarise it in place. Two checks before uploading: a term sheet, contract or medical report goes to the company's servers, and on ChatGPT's Free, Plus and Pro plans chats help train its models unless you turn off Improve the model for everyone in Data controls. Click through to the quoted passage before you rely on any number. Rule: Notebook for several documents, any assistant for one file, and nothing confidential on a free plan until you have checked its data setting.

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