What you’ll be able to do

You’ve got a 40 page report, or a contract someone’s asking you to sign, or a Word doc that’s been forwarded to you with no context whatsoever. You don’t have time to read all of it, but you do need to know what’s actually in it, before you agree to anything or reply to anyone.

AI can get you there. Not a magic wand, but genuinely useful: feed it the document, and it’ll pull out the points that matter, with page or section references so you can go check them yourself. That last bit matters more than people think. A summary you can’t verify isn’t much use to anyone.

Before you start

Right, the boring bit first, but it’s the important boring bit.

Whatever tool you use to summarise a document, that document is going somewhere. If it’s a consumer AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude on a free or basic plan, your upload may be used to improve the model, unless you’ve actively turned that off in settings. Some plans exclude your data from training by default, others don’t. You need to check this before you upload anything, not after.

So think about what’s actually in the file. A contract with someone’s home address on it. A medical letter with a patient’s name and NHS number. An internal report with commercially sensitive numbers in it. None of that should go anywhere near a general AI tool unless you know exactly where it’s going and who might see it.

If in doubt, strip out the personal details first, or use a tool your organisation has actually approved for this kind of thing. And if it’s a legal contract with real consequences, an AI summary is a starting point for your own reading, not a replacement for a solicitor.

Get set up

For this job you want a tool that lets you upload the actual document, not just paste text in (though pasting works fine for shorter things too).

ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all let you upload PDFs and Word files directly into a chat. You attach the file, then ask your question. Simple enough.

Claude is worth knowing about specifically if your document is long, because it handles very long files better than most, without losing track of the earlier pages by the time it gets to the end.

Google NotebookLM works differently, and it’s genuinely good for this. You upload your documents into a “notebook”, and it only answers from what you’ve given it, no wandering off into general knowledge. It also cites the specific passage it’s drawing from, which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to check its working.

Microsoft Word’s Copilot will summarise the document you’ve currently got open, right there in the app, if you’ve got a Microsoft 365 subscription that includes it.

Adobe Acrobat’s AI Assistant does a similar job specifically for PDFs, summarising within Acrobat itself.

None of these is the “right” one, exactly. If you’re already in Word, use Copilot. If it’s a PDF and you live in Acrobat, use that. If you want the most control over exactly how it summarises, and a paper trail of citations, NotebookLM is hard to beat. And if you just want to open a chat and get on with it, ChatGPT or Claude will do fine.

Before you start, have ready: the document itself, a sense of who you are in this situation (a landlord, a trustee, an employee reviewing a supplier contract), and a clear idea of what decision you’re actually trying to make. That last bit shapes everything.

Try it yourself

The trick with prompting for a summary isn’t complicated, but people skip steps. Tell the AI what kind of document it is, who you are, what you need to decide, and exactly what format you want the answer in. Then, always, ask it to quote the exact sentence for anything numeric, because AI tools do occasionally get numbers wrong and you don’t want to find that out later.

Here’s a general-purpose one for a report:

I'm attaching a report. I'm a [your role, e.g. trustee at a small charity] and I need to decide whether to approve the budget it proposes.

Please summarise the key points as bullets, grouped by section, with the page number for each point.

For any figure, date, or percentage, quote the exact sentence it appears in rather than paraphrasing it.

Flag anything that looks like a risk, a cost I should query, or something unusual.

For a contract, you want something a bit more pointed:

I'm attaching a contract. I'm the party being asked to sign as [your role, e.g. the supplier].

Summarise, with section or clause numbers:
- what I'm committing to
- what the other party is committing to
- any deadlines or notice periods
- any penalty clauses, exit clauses, or automatic renewal terms

For every clause involving money, dates, or notice periods, quote the exact wording rather than paraphrasing.

Don't give me legal advice, just tell me clearly what the document says.

And for a Word file where you just need the gist quickly, something shorter works:

Summarise this document in no more than 10 bullet points, in the order the topics appear in the document.

Include the page number next to each point.

If there are any numbers, dates or names, quote them exactly as written rather than rounding or paraphrasing.

Notice the shape repeating: document type, your role, the decision, the format, and the instruction to quote anything numeric word for word. That last instruction alone will save you from most of the embarrassing mistakes.

Check the result

Don’t just read the summary and move on. Spot-check it, every time.

Pick three claims from the summary, the ones that matter most to your decision, and go find them in the original document using the page or section reference the AI gave you. Did it land on the right page? Does the sentence actually say what the summary claims it says?

Ask yourself whether anything important seems to be missing. AI summaries are good at compressing what’s there, less good at telling you what isn’t there. If a contract summary doesn’t mention a termination clause at all, that’s worth checking directly, because either there isn’t one (unusual, and worth flagging) or the AI missed it.

Check the numbers specifically. Any date, percentage, or amount of money should match exactly what’s quoted, word for word, in the original. This is the single most common place these tools slip up, rounding a number or shifting a date by mistake.

And if you’re using NotebookLM, click through its citations. It’s built to show you the source passage, so use that, don’t just trust the summary on faith because it looks confident.

If it doesn’t work

Sometimes the summary comes back vague, or it’s clearly missed the point of the document, or it just won’t accept the file at all.

If the file won’t upload, check the format and size. Very large PDFs, especially scanned ones that are really just images of text, can trip tools up, particularly if there’s no proper text layer for the AI to read. Try converting a scanned document to searchable text first, or split a huge file into smaller sections.

If the summary’s too vague, be more specific in your prompt. Tell it exactly what decision you’re making and what you need to know to make it, rather than asking for a generic summary. “Summarise this” gets you something generic back. “Tell me what I’m agreeing to pay and when” gets you something useful.

If it’s missing things, ask it directly: “did you cover every section of the document? List any sections you didn’t mention.” That alone often surfaces gaps.

And here’s the one that matters most: never upload a contract with someone else’s personal data in it, a medical letter, HR file, or anything containing details you’re not free to share, into a consumer AI tool without checking that tool’s data terms first. If you’re not sure whether your upload is being used to train the model, assume it might be, and act accordingly. When the stakes are genuinely high, a document containing real medical information, a live legal dispute, anything with financial account numbers, don’t use a general AI tool at all. Use one your organisation has actually vetted for this, or don’t use AI for that part of the job.

Keep exploring

If it’s a PDF specifically giving you grief, have a look at How to get AI to read a PDF. If you’re trying to get through a long video rather than a document, there’s How to get AI to summarise a YouTube video. And if what you actually need is a clean write-up of a meeting rather than a report, try How to get AI to take meeting notes.

Sources and review notes

Review date: 15 September 2026 — every source above was opened and checked against the text on that date.