How to use the new AI Assistant in Adobe InDesign
- Angelo Montilla
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Adobe InDesign now includes a new AI Assistant integration, currently available in the beta version of the app. This feature allows you to ask questions, get step-by-step guidance, and streamline repetitive design tasks directly inside your InDesign document.
In this tutorial, we’ll take a practical look at how the AI Assistant can support your workflow inside a real slide deck project. We’ll use it to answer a basic InDesign question, generate a paragraph style, pull metadata from images to create captions, and format text into a bulleted list.
The goal is not to have AI take over the design process. Instead, the AI Assistant works as a support tool to help you move faster while still staying in control of the final design.
Use the link below to download the tutorial exercise files to follow along step-by-step.
Accessing the InDesign Beta App
Before using the AI Assistant, you’ll need to download the beta version of Adobe InDesign.
To access it, open the Creative Cloud desktop app and click the Beta tab at the top of the window. From there, locate the InDesign beta app and install it.
Once the beta version is installed, open your InDesign document. In this example, I’m working with a three-page slide deck presentation project.
Opening the AI Assistant Panel
To access the AI Assistant panel in InDesign, go to:
Window > AI Assistant
In the beta version, the AI Assistant panel may already be docked by default when you open the app.
The AI Assistant can help with beginner, intermediate, and more advanced tasks. For example, if you’re new to InDesign, you could ask:
How do you place an image in a frame?
After submitting the prompt, the AI Assistant will provide step-by-step instructions to guide you through the process.
This is helpful for learning or troubleshooting, but the feature becomes even more useful when you use it to streamline common production tasks inside your layout.
Creating a Paragraph Style from a Prompt
Next, we move to Page 2 of the document, where there are several images that need captions.
Before generating the captions, it’s helpful to create a paragraph style so the caption text has consistent formatting across the page.
In the AI Assistant panel, enter a prompt included in the word document, asking to create a paragraph style with the following settings:
Font: Gotham
Size: 22 pt
Leading: 26 pt
Text color: White
If you don’t have Gotham installed, you can use another sans serif font of your choice.
After submitting the prompt, the AI Assistant creates a new paragraph style using the requested formatting. In this example, it names the style Gotham 22/26 White, which appears in the Paragraph Styles panel.
This is a useful way to quickly generate styles from specific formatting instructions, especially when setting up repeated text elements like captions, callouts, or labels.
Generating Captions from Image Metadata
Once the paragraph style is created, the next step is to generate captions from the images on Page 2.
Each image includes Description metadata, and the goal is to use that metadata as the source for the captions.
In the AI Assistant panel, enter a prompt asking it to pull the Description field from the metadata and create captions for all images on Page 2.
After submitting the prompt, the AI Assistant generates separate caption text frames underneath the images using the Description metadata from each file.
This is a helpful workflow for documents that use properly prepared images with embedded metadata. Instead of manually copying and pasting captions, you can use the AI Assistant to speed up the process and keep the content connected to the image information.
Formatting Text into a Bulleted List
For the final example, we move to Page 3 of the document. This page includes text that needs to be formatted as a bulleted list.
With the text frame selected, enter a prompt asking the AI Assistant to create a bulleted list and apply specific paragraph formatting:
Left indent: 38 px
First line indent: -38 px
After submitting the prompt, the AI Assistant formats the selected text as a bulleted list and applies the requested indentation settings.
The AI Assistant also provides a confirmation message letting you know that the bulleted list was created and the paragraph formatting was applied.
This is another practical example of how the AI Assistant can help streamline formatting tasks inside InDesign.
