'''Automatic summarization''' is the process of shortening a set of data computationally, to create a subset (a [[Abstract (summary)|summary]]) that represents the most important or relevant information within the original content.
In addition to text, images and videos can also be summarized. Text summarization finds the most informative sentences in a document;<ref name="Torres2014">{{cite book|author1=Torres-Moreno, Juan-Manuel|title=Automatic Text Summarization|url=https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Automatic+Text+Summarization-p-9781848216686|date=1 October 2014|publisher=Wiley|isbn=978-1-848-21668-6|pages=320–}}</ref>, various methods ofwhile image summarization areis the subject of ongoing research,; withexisting somemethods lookingtypically attempt to display the most representative images from a given image collection, or generatinggenerate a video; that only includes the important content from the entire collection<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Pan|first1=Xingjia|last2=Tang|first2=Fan|last3=Dong|first3=Weiming|last4=Ma|first4=Chongyang|last5=Meng|first5=Yiping|last6=Huang|first6=Feiyue|last7=Lee|first7=Tong-Yee|last8=Xu|first8=Changsheng|date=2021-04-01|title=Content-Based Visual Summarization for Image Collection|journal=IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics|volume=27|issue=4|pages=2298–2312|doi=10.1109/tvcg.2019.2948611|pmid=31647438|s2cid=204865221|issn=1077-2626}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=January 10, 2018|title=WIPO PUBLISHES PATENT OF KT FOR "IMAGE SUMMARIZATION SYSTEM AND METHOD" (SOUTH KOREAN INVENTORS)|work=US Fed News Service|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1986931333|access-date=January 22, 2021|id={{ProQuest|1986931333}}}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Li Tan|last2=Yangqiu Song|last3=Shixia Liu|last4=Lexing Xie|date=February 2012|title=ImageHive: Interactive Content-Aware Image Summarization|journal=IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications|volume=32|issue=1|pages=46–55|doi=10.1109/mcg.2011.89|pmid=24808292|s2cid=7668289|issn=0272-1716}}</ref>. videoVideo summarization extractsalgorithms identify and extract from the original video content the most important frames from(''key-frames''), and/or the most important video content.segments (''key-shots'')<ref name="PalPetrosino2012">{{cite book|author1=Sankar K. Pal|author2=Alfredo Petrosino|author3=Lucia Maddalena|title=Handbook on Soft Computing for Video Surveillance|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O0fNBQAAQBAJ&q=video+surveillance+summarization&pg=PA81|date=25 January 2012|publisher=CRC Press|isbn=978-1-4398-5685-7|pages=81–}}</ref><ref name="Elhamifar2012">{{cite web |last1=Elhamifar |first1=Ehsan |last2=Sapiro |first2=Guillermo |last3=Vidal |first3=Rene |title=See all by looking at a few: Sparse modeling for finding representative objects |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6247852 |website=ieeexplore.ieee.org |publisher=IEEE |access-date=4 December 2022}}</ref><ref name="Mademlis2016">{{cite web |last1=Mademlis |first1=Ioannis |last2=Tefas |first2=Anastasios |last3=Nikolaidis |first3=Nikos |last4=Pitas |first4=Ioannis |title=Multimodal stereoscopic movie summarization conforming to narrative characteristics |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7583677 |website=ieeexplore.ieee.org |publisher=IEEE |access-date=4 December 2022}}</ref><ref name="Mademlis2018">{{cite web |last1=Mademlis |first1=Ioannis |last2=Tefas |first2=Anastasios |last3=Pitas |first3=Ioannis |title=A salient dictionary learning framework for activity video summarization via key-frame extraction |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0020025517311398 |website=sciencedirect.com |publisher=Elsevier |access-date=4 December 2022}}</ref>.
