Hookup with PDF

You might have already heard of ChatPDF or pdf.ai. These use cases have been gaining traction recently. But why is that?

Firstly, Why PDF?

PDF is a ubiquitous format known for supporting a uniform appearance across different devices, offering compact file sizes, a rich format, and gaining legal acceptance.

When content is formatted as a PDF file, it generally carries a formal tone, suitable for a variety of scenarios.

In the academic field, papers predominantly use this format due to its ability to condense rich knowledge into structured presentations, aiding researchers and students in their explorations.

In the business world, a myriad of reports leverage this format to seamlessly embed statistics and showcase market trends, offering individuals insightful market outlooks. While akin to academic papers in the depth of content, they are often less challenging to navigate.

Nowadays, finding books in PDF format is a common occurrence, often presenting the lengthiest content compared to other mediums.

Given that PDFs typically contain long texts, many PDF reader applications exist to enhance reading experiences and facilitate the digestion of underlying knowledge. The annotation feature stands as a popular tool, with applications like MarginNote even drawing relationships between annotations to foster personal observations.

Utilizing such features can aid readers in retaining crucial points, easing the review process when revisiting the material for fresh insights.

Depending on individual experiences and content types, readers usually skim through new PDFs to decipher their focal points, leading to the formulation of questions that act as reminders and motivations to resume reading with targeted objectives.

PDF Hooks up to GPT? Or the Other Way Around?

GPT excels at repurposing knowledge in diverse manners. Whether summarizing book characters into concise paragraphs or elaborating on textual elements through examples, its proficiency is grounded in natural language programming. It operates through prompts that dictate the transformation process akin to coding in traditional software development.

With GPT, writing your own code to achieve specific goals becomes substantially easier, virtually erasing the complexities associated with programming. Now, asking questions to glean answers from content has become a straightforward process. These queries function as prompts, essentially serving as programming codes, enabling users to extract insights without delving deep into coding, thereby facilitating learning through natural language.

The length of reading materials varies significantly, but PDF learning resources often tend to be dense and extensive. GPT comes to the rescue by elucidating new concepts based on your inquiries, thereby highlighting critical areas to focus on. Moreover, it can condense voluminous content into brief overviews, saving the trouble of manual skimming.

While the transformation quality hinges largely on the prompt engineering, GPT showcases a spectrum of alternative learning techniques transcending the traditional annotation functionalities typical of PDF software. These include:

  1. Generating insights through questioning rather than manual reading accompanied by highlighting and commenting.
  2. Leveraging queries to reshape knowledge, such as summarizing extended texts, as opposed to manually correlating various annotations.

GPT undoubtedly harbors immense potential, promising minimal friction while unlocking value in the realms of reading and learning. This might elucidate the burgeoning traction observed in the merger of GPT and PDF services.

Originally conceived as a minimalist-style reading enhancement service capable of summarization and answering questions about web URLs, wuko.ai has evolved to support PDF files linked through URLs.

The usage remains the same as for web pages — simply send an email to read@wuko.ai containing the URL link to a PDF file. You'll receive a summary of the PDF content, with the option to pose further questions through reply emails. No extra apps are necessary, and compatibility across diverse platforms is assured, provided you have email access.

The key differences between wuko.ai and other GPT-over-PDF services include:

Instead of having to access your questions and insights through additional mobile or web apps, you can keep these discovered insights in your email inbox, accessing them wherever you go, whenever you need.

This is a new learning tool you can use right in your email inbox with minimum friction and maximum flexibility.