New Summarization Tool available for testing

We're beta testing a new Summarization Tool over on the beta version of the web app (beta.app.logos.com). To use it, open any resource, and click the Summarize button in the top right to open the summarize sidebar. Double-check the article is what you're expecting, and then click Summarize. Generating the summary will take several seconds. You can copy the summary to the clipboard by clicking on the copy icon at the top right.

Please let us know what you make of the tool:

Is it easy to use?
Are the summaries accurate and helpful?
Are the summaries the right length?
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile?
Anything else you think we should know?

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Comments

Tes

desktop

Yes please on Desktop.

MJ. Smith

Is it easy to use? yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? reasonably but it is interesting to compare them to the summaries in the search
Are the summaries the right length? They're fine
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? I can see value although I would use it lightly.
Anything else you think we should know? On the web, I didn't like it on the two panel screen but rather wanted to rearrange the space.

Mark Smith

It is not so simple to use. How does one easily select the portion one wants to summarize? I could find no way to do this. When a section heading is at the top of the resource pane, the app makes a decent guess. It can also make a frustratingly bad guess.

I did successfully summarize the section of the Introduction of Judges (NICNT by Webb) titled "Judges and Violence." The summary was too brief. The original takes six pages in the commentary and the summary is 278 words. It misses too much of the detail. While accurate, the summary is too incomplete and not useful.

Valuable? I don't currently see a use for it in my work.

Yes, Yes! Having a usable Summary tool would be absolutely welcome and needed! Libronix used to have a Summary tool but it was unceremoniously taken away.

I just gave this beta tool a brief try:

1) I agree with Mark that you need to give the user a way to indicate to the Summarizer how much text I want the tool to summarize. The simplest way is if the user selects a chunk of text before pressing Summarize, then the tool should go ahead and summarize the selected text.

2) In its current beta version, I can't find a way to use the tool to summarize a second (different) section of text after first use. Steps to reproduce:

- Open a book, go to a section of text, select Summarize

- Close Summary, use the TOC to jump to a different section

- Open Summary tool again: it persistently displays the summary of the first section

3) It would be nice to give the user some control over how the summary is done by providing options for the Summary tool, e.g.

a) Voice of the Summary: To use the author's original voice, or should the summary say "The author says..." (you asked our opinion about this question before)

b) Length of the Summary: Provide a slider for user to select a summary that's 25%, 50%, or 75% of the original text

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275683#Comment_1275683

Libronix used to have a Summary tool but it was unceremoniously taken away.

Wow, it did? I don't remember that. Libronix was messing around with AI already way back then? I didn't think it was far enough along to do anything like summarizing. Or was Libronix just doing bullet points pulling out headings from the text?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275684#Comment_1275684

Libronix used to have a Summary tool but it was unceremoniously taken away.

Wow, it did? I don't remember that. Libronix was messing around with AI already way back then?

IIRC the "summary" consisted of the passages you highlighted ... but I may be wrong.

Dave Hooton

I did a Summarize on one of my books and it did a good job on a 1 page article.

Pitrell

Is it easy to use?

Yes. But it would be nice if also only marked text passages could be summarized. Like it already works with the translation.

Are the summaries accurate and helpful?

As far as I can see, yes.

Are the summaries the right length?

Yes.

Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile?

Absolutely!

Anything else you think we should know?

I love every bit of AI in Logos. Keep it up!

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275684#Comment_1275684

I don't remember that. Libronix was messing around with AI already way back then?

It did a decent job, but not terribly sophisticated. I'm guessing it missed its mark, with limited use. therefore unceremoniously dumped. I don't personally see the value of summaries, but hopefully many do, this time.

Rick Brannan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275685#Comment_1275685

Libronix used to have a Summary tool but it was unceremoniously taken away.

Wow, it did? I don't remember that. Libronix was messing around with AI already way back then?

IIRC it was a statistical approach that highlighted certain portions of the text being summarized as the salient bits.

David Thomas

We're beta testing a new Summarization Tool over on the beta version of the web app (beta.app.logos.com). To use it, open any resource, and click the Summarize button in the top right to open the summarize sidebar.

I used Summary in SeriesX. Thank you for bringing it back!

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275708#Comment_1275708

Libronix used to have a Summary tool but it was unceremoniously taken away.

Wow, it did? I don't remember that. Libronix was messing around with AI already way back then?

IIRC it was a statistical approach that highlighted certain portions of the text being summarized as the salient bits.

Yes, the technology behind it probably was not sophisticated, something having to do with statistical occurrences of words etc. I remember Bob commenting that he wasn't happy with the technology and thus was discontinued with Logos 4 (I think).

I still miss that feature. I actually much prefer that implementation (highlighting certain parts of the text) than the current beta implementation (having AI "summarize" the text "in its own words").

I mentioned before that I often use Community Highlights as a quasi-summarization tool. It works decently for more popular books with sufficient user highlighting. I wish it's also available on the mobile app.

I'm a slow reader. I just don't have time (nor patience, nor eyesight) to read every word of every book I need/want to read. Especially many modern authors are so wordy and long-winded and can't seem to just get to the point.

Jan Krohn

I like the fact that the summary is in the display language, and therefore includes a translation process. (Now I also summarized some metamorphoses in Latin, which worked really great.)

It would be better if the language of the summary can be configured in some way. If I want summaries from English books, I'd have to change the display language to English first, and back to German afterward. So this involves a couple of unnecessary steps.

Mark Barnes (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275721#Comment_1275721

If I want summaries from English books, I'd have to change the display language to English first, and back to German afterward.

You wouldn't want summaries of English books in German?

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275740#Comment_1275740

You wouldn't want summaries of English books in German?

I might. It depends on what I want to use the summary for.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275740#Comment_1275740

You wouldn't want summaries of English books in German?

I would expect that truly bilingual users would want the summary in the language of the book.

Dave Hooton

Is it easy to use? - Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? - it misses parts of longer articles e.g. some paragraphs at the end of Dispensationalism in "The Millennium".
Are the summaries the right length? - it varies with the length of the article, as one would expect (but see above)..
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? - Yes
Anything else you think we should know? - no

Christian Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275708#Comment_1275708

I see a big value of summarizing the text when readers are in a time pinch. Though it needs some fine tuning, this is a good tool. I would have preferred to rearrange the space on my screen instead of using the web app's two panel screen. It is very valuable and easily available. It is not that easy to use. How can one quickly choose the section they wish to summarize? There was nothing I could do about it. The app makes a reasonable estimate when a section heading appears at the top of the resource pane. It is also capable of making extremely inaccurate guesses. Give users the option to choose a summary that represents 25%, 50%, or 75% of the original text using a slider. Permit the summary to be formal, straightforward, imaginative, scholarly, or to lengthen or shorten the section. This would be great on Desktop.

Pitrell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275740#Comment_1275740

You wouldn't want summaries of English books in German?

Just my opinion: I love that you thought of this and that the summary appears directly in German. That was one of the first things I hoped for.

Alan Monroe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275825#Comment_1275825

Is it easy to use? Very easy to use
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? Seemed to be pretty accurate, good summary to at least start your study of the resource from, things to look for
Are the summaries the right length? Ones I did seemed appropriate
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? YES, desktop please
Anything else you think we should know? Not that I know of right now. I'll try it out some more to see if anything comes to my attention

Tim Hensler

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275833#Comment_1275833

I tried the summary tool with "Pictures from Pilgrim’s Progress: A Commentary on Portions of John Bunyan’s Immortal Allegory". Now I want to read the book!

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? Yes - sometimes it provided what I needed and other times it was so interesting it prompted me to explore or even read the whole article. Both good outcomes.
Are the summaries the right length? I think so. If the user feels it's not enough, then maybe they need to read the article rather than a summary.
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? YES (desktop) and yes (mobile).
Anything else you think we should know?

This early beta version summarizes the current article in view. It would be nice if the user could select the article (or chapter) from the table of contents (or other list of articles/chapters) rather than just assume the current article in view. (Of course, if the user wants to summarize a particular article, they can select it from the table of contents first, then activate the summary tool.)
It was nice that as you scroll down the article, and you come to the next article, the summary tool then provides the opportunity to summarize that next article. The same thing happens when scrolling up. Very cool.
Some previous suggestions were to summarize a highlighted section of the book, but it seems a whole article (or chapter) in the book would need to be evaluated to get a reasonably accurate and useful summary.

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275667#Comment_1275667

Is it easy to use?
At first, I had difficulty getting the tool to summarize the correct material. I agree with Mark Smith: there needs to be some way to select the text to summarize.
Are the summaries accurate and helpful?
Some summaries seemed to copy a sentence here and there. Otherwise, it seemed accurate/helpful.
Are the summaries the right length?
Yes.
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile?
Probably would use it on desktop. On the Web app, it is far too cramped to be of much use.
I might use it to summarize material to see if it is worth deeper examination.
Anything else you think we should know?
Could be somewhat useful, but would it have enough value to justify the work to develop? Of course, that is not my decision.
But I'm someone who never learned speed-reading because I prefer to digest what I read, not just get a general impression of its contents [:P]

John W

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275958#Comment_1275958

I think this is a great too! It will help me to gain greater benefit from my Logos library. Often, I will pass on an article that is too lengthy.

I tested it on an article on the “Millenium” in a bible dictionary that is 2617 words long. The summary brought it down to 411, very readable for me with good accuracy.

Even if you did nothing to improve it, it is great as it is now!

James C.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275974#Comment_1275974

I tried it and like it. I would use it.

Stephan Thelen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275825#Comment_1275825

Is it easy to use? - no. How can I influence the section to summarize? How can I change the section or chapter for a second summary?
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? - first impression is good
Are the summaries the right length? yes it is. But no possibility to change the length
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? - Yes
Anything else you think we should know? - no

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1276066#Comment_1276066

How can I influence the section to summarize? How can I change the section or chapter for a second summary?

look at the bottom of the summary after setting the text to a new starting point

Diane Lytle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275700#Comment_1275700

Same on all 5 areas.

Miles Tompkins

1. Yes. Easy to use.

2. I found the summary of James chapter 3 to be both accurate and helpful.

3. Length was fine.

4. Desktop.

5. No comment.

Antony Brennan

Is it easy to use? Yes, I could navigate to the section I wanted to summarise and click the button
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? I could only open one resource from some reason all the others refused to open, they did open in the non-beta web app so it is is hard to as I wanted to see a summary of a resource I recently read but could not. But the one I was able to look at was pretty comprehensive
Are the summaries the right length? Yes
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Oh yes I would love to have this available on the Desktop and Mobile app.
Anything else you think we should know? I think it would come in very handy to see if a resource was something that would be relevant to current areas of study, to get an understanding of what what a resource is about without having to spend too much time looking through it, and to use to aid in making notes. The copy button is a great idea.

mark preston

Seems to be quite a useful tool, so long as the resource has manageable chapters.

John Yuhaniak

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277019#Comment_1277019

Awesome,

Israel and the Nations

The History of Israel from the Exodus to the Fall of the Second Temple F.F. BRUCE

"Summarized" every chapter I clicked on.A great addition to Logos.

only glitch was font size change on different chapter summarizations

Desktop is my main study place but MacBook is convenient

When might we be able to incorporate into Logos?

C.J. Scott

Wow, just tried this out on chapters in books I know well and it is really good. A great application of Ai... you100% have my vote to include this in the main desktop and mobile apps

April Dykes

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? It did a pretty good job of it. Yes, it was helpful.
Are the summaries the right length? Yes
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? both
Anything else you think we should know? Does it only do chapters and articles in a resource? It would be nice to be able to select a section to summarize too.

Jeff Hay

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? Yes
Are the summaries the right length? Sort of. I wasn’t able to scroll in the summary panel on my phone.
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Yes
Anything else you think we should know? Keep the good stuff coming!

Brendon Baddiley

Is it easy to use? Yes very easy
Are the summaries accurate and helpful The ones I looked at seemed to be accurate.
Are the summaries the right length? I think so.
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Both desktop and mobile if possible.
Anything else you think we should know? I think its a great tool and look forward to it being in production soon. Keep up the great work.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277022#Comment_1277022

A great application of Ai

I keep seeing people spelling AI as Ai lately, and it always throws me for a loop, because the first thing I think of when I see "Ai" is the Canaanite city which the Israelites conquered after a failed first attempt (Joshua 7 and 8).

Marcos Alejandro Castillo Beltrán

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277055#Comment_1277055

¿Es fácil de usar?

¿Son los resúmenes precisos y útiles?

¿Los resúmenes tienen la extensión adecuada?

¿Es esto algo que sería valioso en computadoras de escritorio y/o dispositivos móviles?

¿Algo más que creas que deberíamos saber?

Si es fácil de usar.

Si tienen la extensión adecuada.

Si, en computadoras y dispositivos móviles.

Si, incluir la inteligencia artificial dentro del software bíblico logos. Si no lo hacen, igual yo lo uso por fuera. Con lo cual le doy mucho uso a mi creatividad.

Rev. Kevin Obermeyer

My only issue besides what others have said is that I can't seem to get it to scroll, so I can't read the entire summary. This is with both mobile and desktop. The resources scroll fine, but the summary window does not.

ds. P.J. Kotze

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275825#Comment_1275825

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? To accurate. In my case it was rather a rephrazing than a summary.
Are the summaries the right length? The length was good and easy to follow.
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Desktop most certainly if it’s a summary.
Anything else you think we should know? If the summary can dump into a note linking to the resource we can work with it. A related idea for the future, I gave gpt and an offline LM the clippings in a document and asked it to compare the articles with similarities and differences with a conclusion. It was for a lexicon and some commentaries in seperate tests. The results was excellent, accurate and helpful, and above expectation. This can be a game changer for lesson and sermon preparation. In another test I asked to group those results in semantic domains and even list semantic domains to display the nuances of key passages in a preacing theme, got excellent results. This is related to summaries but for multiple resources.

Yasmin Stephen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277077#Comment_1277077

My only issue besides what others have said is that I can't seem to get it to scroll, so I can't read the entire summary. This is with both mobile and desktop. The resources scroll fine, but the summary window does not.

I had the same issue, where there was clearly more content in the summary but it wouldn't scroll. I went back to test it and it looks like the summary view in the web app is capped at 200 words (*). I copied the summary contents into a Word file; there are 273 words and the summary in the web app stopped at the 200th word. (* that was probably already mentioned upthread and I missed it.)

As for my feedback:

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? Yes, though ... (see below)
Are the summaries the right length? They seem to be on the long side; an option to tweak the length would be good (like quick summaries vs more detailed summaries)
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Definitely. I use the Readwise Reader app and the summarize function in the Ghostreader (which uses GPT 3.5) is indispensable in helping me prioritize which articles to read now, archive for later, or just give up on.
Anything else you think we should know? The Ghostreader summaries are a lot shorter than what we're getting here in the Summarization tool and they still cover the gist of the entire article. I went over a summary generated by the tool and I find there is a bit of repetition. The summary could have been tighter, to result in less words. I brought the same article into the Reader app and summarized it with the Ghostreader; I got a tight and accurate 98-word summary, compared to 273 words with the Logos tool.

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277077#Comment_1277077

My only issue besides what others have said is that I can't seem to get it to scroll, so I can't read the entire summary. This is with both mobile and desktop. The resources scroll fine, but the summary window does not.

I encountered that too. This has the effect that it's not possible to generate a summary of a different chapter from the same resource, since the button to do so is below the visible part of the window.

Karl Heckart

I really like to see that you are working on ways to integrate current Ai into the product. This is a good start.

I think the length is adequate as I am using it to get an overview of various books/chapters before I deep-dive into them.

One problem I am having is that the summary exceeds my page length but does not appear to scroll (I am using Chrome browser.

I would really like to see this in the desktop application.

Mark Davis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277038#Comment_1277038

Is it easy to use? Yes

Are the summaries accurate and helpful? Yes

Are the summaries the right length? Sort of. I wasn’t able to scroll in the summary panel on my phone.

Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Yes

Anything else you think we should know? Keep the good stuff coming!

I ran across the scroll issue on my desktop in both Chrome and Firefox. Because of it, you can not be sure that you are reading the entire summary. Also, the summary seems pretty basic, just turning and AI generated outline into words/sentences it almost seems. I don't know how much I would use something like this, if at all honestly.

Yasmin Stephen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277092#Comment_1277092

I had the same issue, where there was clearly more content in the summary but it wouldn't scroll. I went back to test it and it looks like the summary view in the web app is capped at 200 words (*). I copied the summary contents into a Word file; there are 273 words and the summary in the web app stopped at the 200th word. (* that was probably already mentioned upthread and I missed it.)

I played around with it some more and I realized I'm wrong about the word capping - when I zoomed down the page sufficiently (to 75%), I was able to view the entire summary. I'm expecting we'll be able to scroll down eventually.

Also, when I run the tool again on the same article, there were slight changes in the summary and the word count went down to 259. Still too chatty for me but ok.

Michael F Storz

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? It seems to be
Are the summaries the right length? Yes
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? For research but I don't think it would be for the average bible study user.
Anything else you think we should know? I have to close out the book and reopen it to get the summary to change for a different article. That's a bit cumbersome.

Mark Barnes (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277124#Comment_1277124

Thank you for all the reports of issues with scrolling the summary. This should now be fixed.

GaoLu

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1277191#Comment_1277191

Is it easy to use? Yes
Are the summaries accurate and helpful? Bland, but useful.
Are the summaries the right length? Yes, considering the content. Some adjustment might be nice and save AI demand when short summaries are wanted.
Is this something that would be valuable on desktop and/or mobile? Yes. Both.
Anything else you think we should know? Summaries are sometimes enormously long paragraphs. Sometimes they are nicely broken up. Better paragraphing would make better reading.

Peter Matt

My first impression was: wow, the summarize tools was really understanding and summarizing the text; impressive!

The text selection seems to be ignored by the tool, but I assume that's the limitation of the beta sw and it could be extended later.

The length or should I say the compression factor seems to be unpredictable, maybe the density of the source text was very different in my small tests.

It is definitely very easy to use, and the few seconds of processing time is absolutely acceptable. The Web app seemed to be slower than the installed app anyway.

I could imagine to use it from time to time, maybe to compress long comments to give it to somebody else. Maybe another use case would be to summarize the 5 main topics of a readed book, to be able to refresh the content quickly. Yes, I would appreciate to have this button in the installed app as well.

I'm very curious about other upcoming AI based tools. I could imagine that one or the other search tool could even be replaced by an AI tool which is understanding more complex questions. We'll see!

Flávio Costa

Excelente recurso. Fácil de usar, preciso e funcional.

Simon’s Brother

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1275708#Comment_1275708

Libby had both a resource and note file summary too and as mentioned highlighted the text it chose as most relevant so it assisted you in moving through a quicker reading of key points in the selected text. It was implemented as a visual filter for the resource summary tool.