3 Advantages of Automatic Text Summarization

In the recent years several softwares were released, that aimed at creating summaries of texts and documents automatically, without human intervention or editing. In this article we will cover the advantages of such programs over traditional approach to summarization.

Advantage #1: Works Instantly

Reading the entire article, dissecting it and separating the important ideas from the raw text takes time and effort. Reading an article of 500 words can take at least 15 minutes. Automatic summary software summarize texts of 500-5000 words in a split second. This allows the user to read less data but still receive the most important information and make solid conclusions. Today’s computers are far more powerful then the human mind – and it is most likely that computer will create a good summary before the human will have a chance to look at the article.

Advantage #2: Works in Any Language

Several summarization softwares work in any language – an ability that exceeds the abilities of most humans. Since summarizers work on linguistic models they are able to summarize texts in most languages – from English to Russian – without the need for manual intervention. This makes them ideal for people who read and deal with multi-lingual knowledge, or for people who need to translate their information but wish to keep them as short as possible.

Advantage #3: Improves Productivity

Some softwares summarizes not only documents but also web pages. This highly improves productivity as it speeds up the surfing process. Instead of reading full news articles that are full of useless information – the summaries of such web pages can be precise and accurate – but still 20% the size of the original article.

Advantage #4: Does Not Miss Important Facts

A unique features that some software have, is the ability to declare a word whose sentences that include it will automatically appear at the summary. These critical words are usually words with tactical importance, such as ‘bomb’, ‘explode’, etc. While humans can oversee an important sentence, computers will not miss it so important ideas will always be mentioned.