Can You Use Your Own AI with PDFix Desktop?

Lucia Todova
Co-Founder | Chief Architect of PDFix Technology & Automation

What Organizations Really Mean When They Ask This

More and more organizations evaluating PDF accessibility tools ask the same question:

“We already use AI internally. Can PDFix Desktop use our AI?”

Sometimes they mean OpenAI, sometimes, an internal LLM, Amazon Textract, Microsoft Copilot, a private AI agent, or an existing automation platform already deployed in the organization.

The short answer is yes — but probably not in the way most people initially imagine.

Today, PDFix does not work as a generic “connect any chatbot” platform where you simply paste an AI URL and everything magically starts remediating PDFs. PDF accessibility is far more structured than a normal AI chat workflow. Instead, PDFix uses a modular automation architecture built around External Actions.

How AI is Actually Used in PDFix Today

Inside PDFix, remediation workflows are divided into Actions — individual automation steps that perform specific tasks during document processing. Some Actions are built directly into PDFix, while others are External Actions that connect PDFix to outside systems.

In practice, this means you can connect a specific remediation task to the exact AI tool you already use. Your AI can handle auto-tagging document structure, generating alt text for images and formulas, running OCR for scanned PDFs, converting complex math to MathML, generating table summaries, or running PDF/UA validation. If you are using paid commercial models (like OpenAI or AWS), you simply enter your own API key into the configuration.

The deployment is highly efficient. Most External Actions run via Docker on your machine. You install and configure the environment once, enter credentials if needed, and then run the workflow on a single PDF or thousands in a batch.

The Important Part: If you want to use your own AI with PDFix today, you currently need a custom External Action. That Action acts as the bridge between PDFix and your AI system. It defines how data is exchanged, how prompts or workflows are executed, and how results are returned and applied during remediation.

Local, Cloud, Private — It Does Not Really Matter

A lot of discussions around AI focus on whether the model is local, cloud-hosted, private, or enterprise-managed. From the PDFix perspective, that is not the most important distinction.

The real question is: “Can your AI system communicate via an API?”

If the answer is yes, PDFix can connect to it. It does not matter if your AI is a private LLM running on your own secure servers, a company-wide tool like Microsoft Copilot, or a custom AI script your internal team built. As long as it has an API, it can be integrated into PDFix through an External Action.

Why Copilot or ChatGPT Alone is Usually Not Enough

This is where confusion often happens. Many organizations say: “We already have Copilot.”

For some use cases, that might actually be enough. If you simply want to use an AI service to generate alt text for images, this can work beautifully with PDFix through an External Action. However, the critical requirement is not the chatbot interface itself. What you actually need is API access, valid credentials or an API key, and a programmatic way for PDFix to communicate with that AI service.

In practice, PDFix does not connect to the Copilot or ChatGPT user interface that your employees chat with. Instead, PDFix connects directly to the underlying AI engine.

The workflow is straightforward: PDFix uses a custom External Action to send data (like an image) to your AI provider, the AI returns the result (the generated alt text), and PDFix applies it directly during remediation.

While simpler tasks like alt text generation are relatively easy to set up this way, more advanced remediation workflows — such as structure analysis, semantic tagging, or reading order detection — become much more technical. That is why PDFix uses controlled, API-driven remediation pipelines instead of generic chatbot integrations. It is the only way to ensure reliable, repeatable, and scalable automation across enterprise workflows.

Two Ways Organizations Implement Their Own AI

Today, organizations typically choose one of two approaches to bridge their AI with PDFix:

Internal Development

How it works: Your technical team builds the External Action internally.

What PDFix provides: Free examples, documentation, and integration samples as a starting point.

Custom Integration

How it works: You work directly with the PDFix team to build the solution.

What PDFix provides: A tailored External Action designed for your specific AI infrastructure.

In both cases, the architecture is intentionally flexible. The custom AI integration is not limited to a single task like alt text generation; an External Action can automate virtually any remediation-related step inside a PDF processing workflow.

What Comes Next

Today, AI inside PDFix mainly works through External Actions and custom integrations. But this is only the beginning.

We are actively working toward deeper AI assistance directly inside PDFix Desktop itself. This includes AI-powered remediation guidance and interactive accessibility help integrated directly into the remediation workflow. The goal is not only automation, but also helping users understand accessibility issues and fix them faster.

So if this direction interests you, keep following PDFix — more AI-powered accessibility features are coming soon.