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Donald Bauer, former chief technology officer, Global Talent Management, State Department
Stan Kowalski, director of organizational excellence and strategic delivery, International Trade Administration
James McCament, chief digital transformation officer, Customs and Border Protection
Barbara Morton, deputy chief veterans experience officer, Department of Veterans Affairs
Jonathan Alboum, federal chief technology officer, ServiceNow
Steven Boberski, public sector chief technology officer, Genesys
Amanda Chavez, vice president of strategy, Qualtrics
Jake Dempsey, CEO and co-founder, Project Broadcast
Sean Hetherington, director of federal civilian, Adobe
Matt Mandrgoc, head of U.S. public sector, Zoom
Angy Peterson, vice president of experience services, Granicus
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Adobe is adding new AI tools to Acrobat that can turn PDFs into podcasts and presentations, making it easier to consume long documents without reading every page or manually building slides.
Adobe is adding AI tools to Acrobat, including the ability to generate podcast summaries of files, create presentations, and a way for users to edit files using prompts.
If youβre using a recent version of Windows, Microsoftβs Edge browser will βhelpfullyβ make itself your default PDF viewer. You might want to change that default depending on how you feel about the latest news. Microsoft and Adobe have announced that Acrobat will soon be integrated with Edge for enhanced PDF support. Microsoft seems aware of Adobeβs legacy of buggy software living inside browsers, so itβs going out of its way to talk about all the work itβs doing to make sure the new Acrobat feature is secure.
According to Microsoft, replacing its custom PDF stack with Acrobat will mean better colors, sharper graphics, improved performance, and (allegedly) more robust security. Acrobat in Edge will also enable new features like read-aloud narration and more reliable text selection in documents. All these basic capabilities will continue to be free, so you should not notice any loss of functionality as Acrobat support rolls out.
This is not a purely altruistic move by Adobe. Acrobatβs basic features are free, but it also sells premium subscriptions, and itβll be trying to convert some of Microsoftβs 1.4 billion users to paying customers. A subscription adds features like text and image editing, file conversion, and combining files. The wording of Microsoftβs blog post is a bit vague, but it sounds like there will be an upsell built into Edgeβs Acrobat interface. If you upgrade, a browser extension can be used to unlock those features. Those with a pre-existing subscription (starting at $13 per month) will also be able to use the extension to get premium features.
Until a few years ago, Adobeβs Flash platform was integrated with many browsers, but it was a security nightmare. PDF malware exists, but itβs not very common right now. Still, giving Adobe the chance to bungle browser security again is an interesting choice from Microsoft. In a separate blog post, Microsoft explains that it has implemented numerous technical countermeasures like PartitionAlloc (a secure heap implementation) and fuzzing (automated vulnerability testing). Acrobat in Edge will also be included in Microsoftβs bug bounty program, which the company hopes will encourage developers to report issues instead of turning them into exploits.
Edge is a core part of Windows 10 and 11 β you canβt even uninstall it. Microsoft is aware that Windows administrators in managed environments might not want the browserβs PDF handler to change overnight, so the rollout will happen in stages. Managed devices will have to opt-in for now, but the old Edge PDF engine will be discontinued in March 2024. For regular users, you can expect Acrobat to begin appearing in builds of Edge next month.