Reading contracts can be a long and tedious process, but Adobe’s new Acrobat AI Assistant aims to make it easier by summarizing contracts and highlighting key details. Dubbed “Contract Intelligence,” this feature can recognize legal documents within PDFs or scanned files and generate clearer, more digestible summaries. The system even provides clickable citations, allowing users to quickly verify the original text.
On paper, this sounds like a helpful tool, especially for those who struggle to parse complex legal language in contracts, leases, or insurance policies. But given the many well-documented issues with generative AI, it’s fair to question whether AI-driven contract summaries can be trusted. AI has been known to misinterpret or omit critical details, and in the legal world, a single misinterpretation could have serious financial or legal consequences.
There’s also a potential risk of manipulation. If legal professionals learn how to structure contracts to steer AI summaries in a misleading direction, users relying solely on AI-generated overviews could be misled into believing terms are more favorable than they actually are. In a dispute, the burden could fall on the individual who failed to read the full contract themselves—leaving AI as an unreliable safety net.
Ultimately, while Adobe’s AI-powered contract summaries might be useful as a first step in reviewing legal documents, they’re no substitute for careful reading—or professional legal advice.
