Avid readers often come across a lot of books, articles, and newspaper columns that they wish they could read. But, considering that they’re always busy with something new to explore, they’re never able to make time.
In such a situation, busy readers look for easy solutions on the internet to keep them hooked on new material without investing too much mental resources in it. What solution do they have? Summarizing tools.
These tools offer many features for note-taking and understanding the source material by leveraging their NLP algorithms. Thus, boosting your productivity to the max.
But is every summarizing tool worth using? Not at all. This is why I did my testing to arrive at the best “TLDR” tool for busy readers called the AI Summarizer. Why is it the best? How to use it? Let’s find out in today’s article.
What is AI Summarizer?
The AI Summarizer is a free online tool that works on advanced NLP algorithms to shrink books, articles, newspaper reports, research papers, etc., into shorter content. The tool intelligently understands the context of input text to provide summaries in a ‘human-like’ manner.
What stands out to me about this tool is its ability to make complex written content into easy-to-understand language, free of technical jargon. This makes it very convenient for busy readers to get the gist of things without getting into the nitty-gritty.
Top Features for Busy Readers
The AI Summarizer has a lot of good features for readers and researchers alike, making it the ultimate “TLDR” tool.
A free tool
First of all, it is completely free to use with unlimited tries. Second, it provides a humongous word cap of 3000 words per submission and 5000 words in the paid version (plans start at a meager $8/month.) This is, overall, quite an attractive package for any reader needing to condense lengthy content and learn it in a simple way.
Simple interface
Second, the tool’s interface is very simplistic and appealing for beginner-level users with no prior experience of using AI tools. Although some expert users might complain that the interface is too basic, for me it was perfect!
Extensive language support
Finally, the AI Summarizer comes with support for 9 global languages. This is huge for me as I have to understand all the lengthy sales reports and case studies coming from our parent company in Paris, France.
But it is also a plus point for students who want to expand their horizons beyond content in their local language (imagine the amount of learning you can do with this tool!)
With all that said, these aren’t the only benefits you get as a busy reader from the AI Summarizer. The tool also has other capabilities too.
Other features
1. Fetch Articles Directly from URLs
AI Summarizer directly gets content from web pages using the ‘link’ feature. You simply have to paste the URL of the article, news report, etc. that you need to summarize, and the tool will do the rest.
As a demonstration, I provided a news report from the BBC to test whether this feature was working or not.
To shorten the said content, I first clicked the ‘Add URL’ option to paste the link, and then the ‘Summarize’ button.
As you can see, the input text is directly fetched and summarized from the link with a lot of accuracy and precision. This feature can allow busy readers like me to have a quick read of materials that we otherwise miss in our routine lives.
2. Support Multiple File Formats
The AI Summarizer facilitates its users with a lot of options like the ability to add .pdf, .txt, and .docx files as input. This can make it easy for busy readers to quickly get TL and DR of their required content without having to jump from format to format.
3. Customize Summaries
In the tool, you get the option to vary the summary length. Also, you can see bullet points or ‘best line’ for the shortened content, enabling an elevated level of understanding of the input content.
Such customizations in the summary are necessary for busy readers to quickly scan intricate details of a text (e.g., using bullet points) without investing too many resources.
Possible Downsides?
So far, we have established that the AI summarizer is a solid “TLDR” tool for readers due to its fast-functioning features, free usage, and simplistic UI among many other benefits.
But, what about its possible downsides? Surely there must be some shortcomings of the tool, right?
1. Missing of Analytical Depth
While the AI Summarizer’s outputs are mostly quick and accurate, I did feel some form of limited analytical depth in its summaries for academic input.
The tool aptly shrinks the said texts using easy words. But, in that quest, I believe it oversimplifies context and misses out on adding crucial facts figures, and details that better justify the author’s stance.
Take the example of a research paper that I summarized on “Big Universe, Big Data: Machine Learning and Image Analysis for Astronomy” below.
As evident, the output lacks formal information like the equations mentioned in the research paper. Or the details of the analytical methods used.
2. Formatting Issues
The above example takes us to my second shortcoming for the tool. Sometimes, when I upload a PDF or Word document, I see that the AI Summarizer doesn’t pick the words and formatting accurately resulting in a visually appalling input window.
While this isn’t a huge concern, it can be annoying for some busy readers, especially when they want to compare the input and output text side-by-side for analysis. This needs to be fixed for future updates in the tool to elevate the user experience even further.
Final Verdict
The AI Summarizer is an effective and user-friendly tool designed for busy readers. It offers features like summarizing articles directly from URLs, supporting multiple file formats, and allowing customization of summary length.
Despite its advantages, users may experience a little bit of shortcomings, but nothing major that can be considered a ‘deal-breaker.’
Considering that the summarizer is completely free to use with fast and accurate functionality, I say that it is, indeed, the ultimate TLDR tool I found on the internet.
Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I created Thebusinessdive to help you elevate your productivity to the next level. It is a place where you find the best tools, ideas, and tips to supercharge your productivity and performance. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!
