As the Chief Information Officer at Adobe, I often field inquiries from both our internal teams and other technology leaders about how generative AI can truly benefit knowledge workers on an enterprise scale. Given Adobe’s role as both a producer and consumer of generative AI technologies, this question carries significant urgency for us. It’s also a question that CIOs of large companies are uniquely positioned to address, given our broad view across different teams within our organizations and our interactions with customers, which provide us with ample opportunities to enhance business functions.
At Adobe, our approach to AI encompasses several key aspects, including investment in foundational AI, strategic adoption, development of an AI ethics framework, considerations around legality, security, and content authenticity. We’ve adopted a phased approach to rollout, beginning with pilot groups and fostering communities around AI.
This approach involves exploring and documenting various use cases, such as writing and editing, data analysis, presentations, employee onboarding, corporate training, employee portals, and enhanced personalization across HR channels. We support these rollouts with training resources like podcasts to educate and empower employees to leverage AI in ways that enhance their work and foster greater engagement.
Unlocking productivity with digital documents
Among the myriad ways in which CIOs can harness generative AI to deliver value at scale for knowledge workers, I’d like to highlight its applications in digital document management—a domain in which Adobe has long been a leader. Digital documents are integral to the daily workflows of knowledge workers across various roles, whether they’re sales associates responding to requests for proposals (RFPs), marketers seeking competitive insights for campaigns, or legal and finance professionals analyzing complex information. However, despite the ubiquity of documents and the critical information they contain, many knowledge workers struggle with information overload, which adversely affects both productivity and engagement.
Lessons from our experience
Earlier this year, the Acrobat team approached us about launching an all-employee beta for the new AI Assistant powered by generative AI. This tool was designed to help users consume information in documents more efficiently and facilitate the consolidation and formatting of information into business content.
In evaluating the impact of generative AI on our workforce, we identified three specific ways in which it has helped our employees work smarter and enhance productivity:
1. Accelerated access to knowledge: Our employees used AI Assistant to streamline their interaction with large, complex documents. The tool’s summary feature automatically generates an overview of the content, enabling users to quickly grasp key insights. Additionally, the conversational interface allows employees to interact with their documents, ask questions, and receive relevant information promptly. For example, our R&D teams have significantly reduced the time spent on reading and analyzing technical documents by leveraging generative AI to extract pertinent details and identify trends efficiently.
2. Enhanced navigation and verification: While traditional search methods have limitations in navigating vast document repositories, AI Assistant offers a more targeted approach. By applying generative AI to selected documents, the tool generates responses along with clickable citations and links, enabling users to navigate directly to the source for verification. This capability has proven invaluable to our sales teams, who can now quickly access critical intelligence for personalizing pitches and responding to RFPs.
3. Simplified content creation: Generative AI has facilitated the transformation of information from documents into various business assets. Employees can now summarize meeting transcripts, highlight action items, and format the content into emails or reports effortlessly. For instance, our communications teams have significantly reduced the time spent on content creation by leveraging AI to generate first drafts of media briefing decks, social media posts, blogs, and other thought leadership content.
Ensuring simplicity, safety, and responsibility
Deploying new technologies can often entail lengthy evaluation and implementation processes, but Acrobat AI Assistant offers a streamlined solution that can be deployed within minutes across desktop, web, and mobile platforms. We’ve implemented robust processes, protocols, and technologies to safeguard our customers’ data, ensuring that their privacy and security are upheld. Moreover, we provide ongoing training and education to promote successful adoption and encourage responsible use of generative AI.
In conclusion, generative AI holds tremendous promise for enhancing productivity and efficiency across various business functions. By implementing appropriate safeguards, identifying high-impact use cases, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation, technology leaders can empower their workforce to thrive in an AI-driven landscape.
