Intelligent automated content summary generation

A method for the automated generation and provision of a content summary for a media item, the method comprising:

• providing, by one or more processors, the media item comprising audio and/or visual content in a computer-readable format as an input to a content summarizing program, wherein at least one of (a) the content summarizing program comprises at least one neural network or (b) the content summarizing program is configured to call at least one neural network;
• operating, by the one or more processors, the content summarizing program to:
• process the audio and/or visual content to determine a plurality of segments of the audio and/or visual content;
• determine a plurality of respective rankings, each respective ranking corresponding to one segment of the plurality of segments, wherein the respective ranking indicates how representative of the audio and/or visual content as a whole the segment is;
• based on the plurality of respective rankings and summary time criteria, select summary segments from the plurality of segments;
• based on the summary segments, generate a segment transition, wherein the segment transition corresponds to a pair of adjacent summary segments and comprises characteristics of both a first summary segment of the pair of adjacent summary segments and a second summary segment of the pair of adjacent summary segments;
• and
• stitch together the summary segments using the segment transition to generate a content summary, wherein the summary segments are stitched together such that the segment transition is disposed between the first summary segment and the second summary segment;
• and
• receiving, by the one or more processors, the content summary as output from the content summarizing program.

A computer program product comprising at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions stored therein, the computer-executable instructions portions comprising computer program code instructions corresponding to a content summarizing program, the computer program code instructions, when executed by a processor of a summarizing computing entity, are configured to:

• provide a media item comprising audio and/or visual content in a computer-readable format as an input to the content summarizing program, wherein at least one of (a) the content summarizing program comprises at least one neural network or (b) the content summarizing program is configured to call at least one neural network;
• operate the content summarizing program to:
• process the audio and/or visual content to determine a plurality of segments of the audio and/or visual content;
• determine a plurality of respective rankings, each respective ranking corresponding to one segment of the plurality of segments, wherein the respective ranking indicates how representative of the audio and/or visual content as a whole the segment is;
• based on the plurality of respective rankings and summary time criteria, select summary segments from the plurality of segments;
• based on the summary segments, generate a segment transition, wherein the segment transition corresponds to a pair of adjacent summary segments and comprises characteristics of both a first summary segment of the pair of adjacent summary segments and a second summary segment of the pair of adjacent summary segments;
• and
• stitch together the summary segments using the segment transition to generate a content summary, wherein the summary segments are stitched together such that the segment transition is disposed between the first summary segment and the second summary segment;
• and
• receive the content summary as output from the content summarizing program.