How to Chat with Your Documents Using AI
LearnByAI lets you upload any document and have a natural conversation with it — asking questions, extracting information, comparing files, and generating summaries in seconds. This guide walks you through every feature from your first upload to advanced multi-document comparison.
What you can do with LearnByAI document chat:
- ✓Upload PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, text files, and scanned images
- ✓Ask plain-language questions and get grounded answers with sources
- ✓Choose from 8 document types for optimised AI responses
- ✓Use quick-action buttons for instant summaries, key points, and reports
- ✓Compare two or more documents to find differences and similarities
- ✓Chat in 50+ languages with voice input and text-to-speech output
- ✓View full chat history per document selection
- ✓Export, download, or save extracted text from any document
Step-by-Step: Your First Chat
Upload Your Document
In the left sidebar, click Upload new document. A drop zone appears — drag and drop your file or click to browse. You can upload multiple files at once.
Supported formats:
Scanned PDFs and image files are processed with OCR — the AI can read handwritten or printed text from photos and scans automatically.
Select the Document Type
After choosing your file, a Select Document Type modal appears before the upload starts. Pick the type that best describes your document:
The document type controls which AI collection, system prompt, and quick-action buttons are used. A contract gets clause-extraction prompts; a medical record gets terminology-explanation prompts. If unsure, pick General Document.
Select Documents in the Explorer
Your uploaded documents appear in the left panel, grouped by type. Tick the checkbox next to any document to select it. You can select multiple documents of the same type for multi-document chat or comparison.
The chat panel will show your selected document(s) and a Start Chat button. This is intentional — no chat loads until you explicitly click Start Chat, keeping the experience clean and server-efficient.
Click Start Chat
Once you have selected your documents, click Start Chat (or Start Comparing if you have two or more selected). LearnByAI will:
- Load your previous chat history for this exact document selection
- Activate the input bar and quick-action buttons
- Show the welcome state if no previous history exists
If you change your document selection after starting a chat, the panel resets to the Start Chat screen so you can begin a fresh session with the new selection.
Ask Questions in Plain Language
Type any question in the input bar and press Enter or click Send. You don't need to use special syntax — ask naturally:
"What are the termination conditions in this contract?"
"Summarise the key findings of this research paper"
"What medications are listed in this medical record?"
"Are there any red flags in this financial report?"
"Who are the parties involved in this agreement?"
"What are the deliverables and deadlines?"
The AI retrieves the most relevant passages from your document and synthesises a precise answer. Each response includes a Sources section showing which documents contributed to the answer.
Using Quick-Action Buttons
Above the input bar you'll find quick-action chips — pre-written, type-optimised prompts you can fire with a single click. The buttons change depending on your document type:
Contract
Medical Record
Financial Report
Academic / Research
HR Document
Technical / Engineering
A Compare Documents button also appears when 2 or more documents are selected. It appears last in the chip list and switches the session into compare mode.
Comparing Multiple Documents
- 1Select two or more documents of the same type in the explorer
- 2Click Start Comparing — your chat history for this exact combination loads
- 3Click the Compare Documents chip above the input, or type your own compare question
- 4A focused comparison dialog appears — choose what to compare (clauses, dates, metrics) and add any specific notes
- 5The AI analyses all selected documents together and highlights what's new, removed, changed, or common
- 6Sources list all documents that contributed to the comparison
Voice Input & Text-to-Speech
Voice Input (Speech-to-Text)
Click the microphone icon in the input bar to record a voice query. LearnByAI uses Whisper to transcribe your speech into text and sends it as a normal message. The AI responds in text and audio.
Voice input supports all 50+ languages. Speak naturally — the transcription handles accents and mixed-language input well.
Listen to Responses
Every AI response has a Listen button. Click it to hear the response read aloud using text-to-speech. Useful for accessibility, hands-free review, or listening while reading along.
Multi-Language Support
LearnByAI supports 50+ languages. To change the response language, use the language selector in the chat input bar (the flag dropdown next to the mic button). The AI will respond in the selected language even if your document is in a different language.
You can also ask questions in any language — the system detects your input language automatically when no language is locked. This is especially useful for translating document content: simply switch the language and ask "summarise this document" to receive the summary in your chosen language.
Per-Message Actions
Below every AI response you'll find a row of action buttons:
Summarise
Re-summarise this specific response in a shorter form
Explain Simpler
Ask the AI to re-explain using simpler, plain-language terms
Expand
Get a more detailed, expanded version of this answer
Create Table
Reformat the answer as a structured table
Extract Key Points
Pull out the most important points as a bullet list
Translate
Translate this response into any of 50+ languages
Listen
Hear the response read aloud using text-to-speech
Export
Download this response as a text file
Ask Follow-up
Pre-fill the input box with a follow-up question prompt
Chat History
Every conversation is saved per document selection. When you select the same document (or combination of documents) again and click Start Chat, your previous history loads automatically — so you can pick up exactly where you left off.
History is exact-match: selecting Document A alone loads only the conversations you had with Document A alone. Selecting Document A + Document B loads only conversations where both were selected together. This keeps context clean and prevents unrelated history from appearing.
Authenticated users keep their history across devices. Anonymous (not logged in) users keep history for 7 days within the same browser session.
Managing Your Documents
Download Original
Click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to any document name, then select Download Original to retrieve the file you uploaded.
Save Text As…
The three-dot menu also offers Save Text As — download the AI-extracted text from your document as a .docx or .pdf file. Useful for archiving the processed content.
Delete a Document
Select Delete from the three-dot menu. This permanently removes the file from storage, its vector embeddings from the AI database, and all associated chat history. This action cannot be undone.
Document Type Groups
Documents are grouped by type in the explorer (General, Contract, Medical, etc.). Only one group can be expanded at a time. Click the group header to expand or collapse it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an account to use document chat?
No. You can upload documents and start chatting immediately without signing up. Anonymous users get a limited number of documents and messages per day. Creating a free account increases those limits and saves your history across sessions.
What file types are supported?
PDF, DOCX, TXT, XLSX, JPG, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WEBP. Scanned documents and photos are processed with OCR (Tesseract) to extract text before indexing.
Is my document data private?
Yes. Documents are stored in your session only. Each user's documents and chat history are isolated — no other user can access your files. You can delete any document at any time to remove it from all storage including the AI vector database.
Why can I only select documents of the same type?
Each document type uses a separate AI collection optimised for that content. Mixing types (e.g. a contract and a medical record) would produce incoherent retrieval results. The type lock ensures the AI always has a consistent context for your question.
Can I chat with multiple documents at once?
Yes. Select two or more documents of the same type and click Start Chat. The AI retrieves relevant passages from all selected documents and synthesises a combined answer. Use Compare Documents to get a structured side-by-side analysis.
What languages are supported?
Over 50 languages for both input and output. Use the flag dropdown in the input bar to lock the response language. Voice input via the microphone also supports multi-language transcription.
How is billing calculated?
Free accounts get a daily allowance of documents and messages at no cost. Paid users operate on a pay-as-you-go wallet system — you top up your balance and are charged per document upload and per message. The price is flat regardless of document type.
What happens if the AI can't find the answer in my document?
LearnByAI only answers from your uploaded document content. If the information isn't in the document, the AI will say so clearly rather than making something up from general knowledge. This grounding is what makes the answers reliable.
Ready to Start?
No account required. Upload your first document and get AI-powered answers in under 30 seconds.
Open Document Chat →Explore by Document Type
LearnByAI · AI Document Intelligence · All documents processed with session-isolated RAG pipelines