There is so much material on YouTube that, if an adequate search and selection of the information available there is carried out, it can be used as a practical source of content to learn or reinforce.

The videos on this platform are accompanied by self-generated transcripts, which with the help of some external tools can be downloaded. Extending these possibilities, an extension for Chrome also offers the possibility of creating automatic summaries, generated by ChatGPT.

A Chrome extension to summarize YouTube video transcripts

ChatGPT is a tool that has impressed many with its demonstration of what a natural language model can achieve by making available to any user the ability to interact with this AI through a chat conversation.

Just as this tool is popular among Internet users for the ease it offers to interact with it, for developers this is a medium that also opens up new possibilities in their area.

The benefits of this resource were recently incorporated into glassp, a Chrome extension that integrates into the browser a highlighter and organizer of quotes and ideas taken from websites. Using the transcripts that YouTube automatically generates for most of the videos it hosts, plus ChatGPT’s ability to generate text summaries, this extension now has the ability to summarize the transcript of a video in moments. Through an interface integrated into the YouTube website, transcriptions of the video being reviewed are made available in several languages, with the possibility of browsing its timestamps, copying part or all of its text and summarizing its content using ChatGPT.

To use this tool you need to register. However, all of its features are freely available, while the extension remains in beta development and looking for a monetization model.

As can be seen in the demonstration video Shared by its developer, Kazuki Nakayashiki, this extension is extremely useful for students and researchers, and it is also easy to use. When you need a quick and accurate summary of a video, Glasp can be an excellent lifesaver.