Closed captioning summarization

A system for providing closed captioning summarization, comprising:

• a processing system;
• and
• memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processing system, cause the system to:
• receive a selection to summarize a preceding part of a media item;
• determine at least one timestamp corresponding to the selected preceding part;
• obtain a portion of closed captions corresponding to the at least one timestamp;
• generate summarization instructions to summarize the closed captions portion;
• include, in a language-model (LM) prompt, the summarization instructions and the closed captions portion;
• provide the LM prompt to an LM;
• receive, from the LM, a summary of the closed captions portion;
• separate the summary into a plurality of portions, where each portion corresponds with a character description;
• determine timestamps and position information corresponding to appearances of the characters in upcoming scenes of the media item;
• and
• cause a display of each character description portion at a position near the corresponding character based on the timestamps and position information of the appearances of the characters in upcoming scenes;
• and
• cause a display of the summary on a display screen.

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions, which when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

• receive a selection to summarize a preceding part of a media item;
• determine at least one timestamp corresponding to the selected preceding part;
• obtain a portion of closed captions corresponding to the at least one timestamp;
• generate summarization instructions to summarize the closed captions portion;
• include, in a language-model (LM) prompt, the summarization instructions and the closed captions portion;
• obtain information about characters of the media item;
• include the information about the characters and instructions to generate descriptions of the characters in the LM prompt;
• provide the LM prompt to an LM;
• receive, from the LM, a summary of the closed captions portion and descriptions of the characters;
• separate the summary into a plurality of portions, where each portion corresponds with a character description;
• determine timestamps and position information corresponding to appearances of the characters in upcoming scenes of the media item;
• cause a display of each character description portion at a position near the corresponding character based on the timestamps and position information of the appearances of the characters in upcoming scenes;
• and
• cause a display of the summary on a display screen.