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The war against PDFs is heating up对 PDF 的战争正在升温

Will the file type survive the AI revolution?这种文件格式能否在 AI 革命中存活？

Feb 24th 2026|2 min read

When Adobe introduced the portable document format (PDF) in 1993, a consultant from Gartner called it “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life”. Users would have to twiddle their thumbs waiting for the megabyte-sized files to download over their dial-up internet, then wait again for their PCs to render them. The software-maker’s board wanted to kill the project. But the PDF triumphed, particularly after the Internal Revenue Service, America’s tax authority, began to use it for digital tax forms. Today more than 2.5trn PDFs float in the ether. But will the format survive the ai revolution?

1993 年，Adobe 推出可移植文档格式（PDF）之际，高德纳咨询公司的一位顾问直言不讳地斥之为”我这辈子听过的最蠢的主意”。用户要对着屏幕干等，才能通过拨号网络下载动辄数兆字节的文件，然后再等电脑慢悠悠地将其渲染出来。Adobe 董事会甚至想直接叫停这个项目。但 PDF 最终胜出，尤其是在美国税务局（IRS）开始将其用于数字报税表格之后，格局便彻底奠定。如今，超过 2.5 万亿份 PDF 漂浮在数字世界的以太之中。然而，这种格式能否在 AI 革命的浪潮中存活下来？

PDFs still have drawbacks. They are a pain to view on a smartphone. Copying data from them is fiddly. Software tools that read screens for blind people struggle with PDFs. The file type, which Adobe relinquished control over in 2008, is also a vehicle for malware: a fifth of email-based cyber-attacks utilise PDF attachments, according to Check Point, a cyber-security firm.

PDF 的痼疾从未消散。它在智能手机上的阅读体验十分糟糕；从中提取数据既繁琐又低效；为盲人朗读屏幕内容的软件工具也难以对付 PDF。这种文件格式于 2008 年被 Adobe 开放后，也沦为了恶意软件的温床：据网络安全公司 Check Point 的数据，五分之一的电子邮件网络攻击都借助了 PDF 附件。

Lately another source of criticism has emerged. The large language models (LLMs) underpinning generative AI are often bamboozled by PDFs, reading a page set in several columns from left to right rather than top to bottom, say, or getting confused by headers and footers. Trouble parsing PDFs is one of the reasons AI chatbots occasionally “hallucinate” nonsense.

最近，又多了一重批评之声。支撑生成式 AI 的大型语言模型（LLMs）常常被 PDF 弄得晕头转向——比如，遇到多栏排版的页面，模型会从左到右横着读，而非自上而下逐栏阅读；页眉页脚也常让它们大惑不解。解析 PDF 的困难，正是 AI 聊天机器人偶尔一本正经地”胡说八道”的原因之一。

Enter the disrupters. Startups such as Factify are on a mission to build a new file type that is better suited to the technology. Matan Gavish, its boss, talks of his “megalomaniac” vision of displacing the PDF.

于是，颠覆者登场了。Factify 等初创公司正致力于打造一种更契合 AI 时代的全新文件格式。其创始人马坦·加维什（Matan Gavish）谈及自己”取代 PDF”的宏大愿景时，毫不讳言地称之为一种”野心家式的执念”。

Yet Duff Johnson, head of the PDF Association, protector of the format, argues that the fault lies not in the file type but in ourselves. He contends that there is no reason developers cannot build bots that are able to use PDFs. The AI assistant embedded in Acrobat, Adobe’s PDF reader, is designed to do precisely that, points out Leonard Rosenthol, the software-maker’s PDF guru. Google, a leader in AI, has also rolled out a tool for developers who use its Gemini models that makes it easier to ingest PDFs. The format’s reign may yet continue. ■

然而，PDF 协会的掌门人、这一格式的守护者达夫·约翰逊（Duff Johnson）却认为，问题的根源不在格式本身，而在于开发者。他坚持认为，没有任何理由阻止开发者打造出能够驾驭 PDF 的 AI 机器人。Adobe PDF 阅读器 Acrobat 内嵌的 AI 助手，正是为此而生，该公司的 PDF 技术负责人莱纳德·罗森托尔（Leonard Rosenthol）如是指出。AI 领域的领头羊谷歌也已面向使用其 Gemini 模型的开发者推出了一款工具，让 PDF 的数据摄取变得更为便捷。或许，PDF 的统治地位远未走到尽头。■