The internet’s favourite format: how the PDF conquered the digital world

An Adobe expert explains why the Portable Document Format remains so popular worldwide – and what AI means for its future

“I don’t know how many people actually know what PDF stands for, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone in the world who doesn’t know what a PDF is.” That’s the view taken by Leonard Rosenthol, senior principal scientist and PDF architect at Adobe, when looking back at the longevity of the hugely popular file format.

He has worked on PDF for three decades and suggests that those three letters have become synonymous with having a “usefulness for everyone”, even in a world where the next big thing in technology usually takes over.

PDF was launched by Adobe in 1993 to enable documents to be shared in a way that replicated the layout, fonts and images so they looked the same on any device – so no more wonky formatting. Trillions of individual PDFs are now out in the wild, replicating everything from contracts to reports, ebooks to flyers, and university coursework to product instruction manuals.

“The [reason for its] success is fairly simple,” says Rosenthol. “We attempted to serve a significant purpose in the world – to enable users to produce content, distribute it and see it on any platform.”

Back then, PDF’s only focus was Microsoft Windows, Apple’s Macintosh and printers. Now it is integral to a plethora of devices and still going strong. “There isn’t anything else which serves that purpose,” says Rosenthol. “We told the world how to do it, and we wanted the world to participate.”

PDF was granted an ISO International Standard in 2008, a recognition that it met global quality and interoperability standards, which helped ensure it became embedded in the emerging digital world.

The PDF has never been limited by country, language or age group, and has always stayed true to its original ethos: displaying text and pictures in a flat format.

But there’s also been plenty of innovation and interaction. In 2011, Adobe Systems acquired EchoSign, which allowed people to formally authorise PDFs with their signature. In 2015, PDFs could be accessed remotely from Adobe’s Document Cloud. And in 2020, Adobe Liquid Mode was introduced to enhance PDF readability on smartphones, given their smaller screens.

Now the PDF must find its place in a world of artificial intelligence, but Rosenthol just sees this as yet another opportunity to transform people’s personal and working lives. The PDF has always been a “container” or “envelope” for all digital experiences, he says.

“We started with what you create is what the other person sees,” says Rosenthol. “Now we’ve moved to what the author creates is what we want the other person to easily consume, in a way that makes sense for them.”

Given that AI needs unending amounts of information to function, the veteran PDF expert believes its role is now more important than ever. While there’s no way to know exactly how many PDFs exist in the world, all contain the thing that needs to be mined, he says, solving every AI vendor’s number one problem … “data, data, data”.

Whether you’re using Gemini, Open AI or Claude as your AI tool of choice, Rosenthol sees them all as “walled gardens” [platforms operating in isolation] and remembers how “walled gardens were the exact problem the PDF solved in its infancy”, working cross-platform without a hitch.

“In a world of AI,” he says, “we bring content between systems, we bring context, and we continue to make PDF this envelope of experience.”

He admits it’s humbling to know you have affected “pretty much everyone in the world”, but does he ever see a world without PDF? “To be honest, no,” he says. “Unless we believe the world will have one single computer, one single database, one single infrastructure, that everything lives on.”

Perhaps that’s why Rosenthol believes PDF’s lifespan will extend firmly into the next generation; whether at school, college, or university, young people will need to take their work with them and into their careers, he says.

AI again becomes critical here, too. Adobe Acrobat Studio now features PDF Spaces, which turns PDFs, other files and websites into hubs where an AI Assistant can unlock insights from the information, generate new ideas and make recommendations.

Rosenthol sees this as the next iteration, with people asking AI to “Make me a presentation” or “Make me a report”, effectively asking it to “Make me my PDF”.

And whether you know what PDF stands for or you don’t – it’s portable document format – Rosenthol points out that what will continue to drive PDF into the future is the need for people to work across all worlds. “You have to have a solution to go between,” he says, “not only for machines but also for humans.”

Find out how Adobe Acrobat Studio, now with PDF Spaces, can help you work smarter not harder