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PDF trends in 2025, according to AI

Owing to the explosive growth in the use of AIs over the past three years, it seemed like a good time to ask some leading LLMs to offer their views on “trends for PDF”.

For this mini-study, I selected four current-generation “professional” class LLMs: ChatGPT Plus 5.2, Gemini 3 Pro, Claude’s Opus 4.5, and Microsoft Copilot. I offered the same query to each:

Estimate global trends in the use of PDF technology. Exclude the PDF Association (pdfa.org) as a source. Don’t mention any vendors by name.

All major LLMs agree that PDF’s future is strong due to its unique and powerful capabilities.

Duff Johnson

By Duff Johnson
December 2025

PDF trends in 2025, according to AI

Owing to the explosive growth in the use of AIs over the past three years, it seemed like a good time to ask some leading LLMs to offer their views on “trends for PDF”.

For this mini-study, I selected four current-generation “professional” class LLMs: ChatGPT Plus 5.2, Gemini 3 Pro, Claude’s Opus 4.5, and Microsoft Copilot. I offered the same query to each:

Estimate global trends in the use of PDF technology. Exclude the PDF Association (pdfa.org) as a source. Don’t mention any vendors by name.

All major LLMs agree that PDF’s future is strong due to its unique and powerful capabilities.

Duff Johnson

By Duff Johnson
December 2025

Support the PDF Association documentary: “30 years of PDF”

May 2023 by PDF Association staff
For members only


The documentary is scheduled for release in early 2024. There’s still time to become a supporter!

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May 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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This new corpus – nearly 8 million PDFs totaling about 8 TB – was gathered from across the web in … Read more

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May 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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A new PDF Association service will provide targeted test-cases to highlight interoperability issues resolved in the latest PDF specification.

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April 2023 by PDF Association staff
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PDF’s technical community will gather for its first-ever PDF Week during the first week of May in Paris. The conference … Read more

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April 2023 by PDF Association staff
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The PDF Association has volunteered to host a new Liaison Working Group (LWG) to bring together experts from both PDF/X … Read more

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April 2023 by Tony McKinley
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Author and longtime PDF evangelist Tony McKinley’s latest book, “PDF Expert”, shares his experience working directly with the world’s most … Read more

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April 2023 by PDF Association staff
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Now anyone can download the latest PDF specification, ISO 32000-2, at NO COST! What are you waiting for?

PDF Association news

March 2023 by PDF Association staff
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All remaining seats at PDF Week are reserved for ISO WG attendees and PDF Association members.

For members only, PDF Association news

March 2023 by John Brinkman
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The May meeting of the PDF Forms TWG will begin work on a draft specification for declarative forms in PDF.

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March 2023 by Roman Toda
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The Deriving HTML from PDF TWG’s specification is an important part of their program of work as it supports one … Read more

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March 2023 by Matthew Hardy
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The goal of the Well-Tagged PDF (WTPDF) specification is to ensure high-quality documents that are suitable for content reuse, extraction, … Read more

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