Intent to Prototype: Summarizer API
Domenic Denicola
Contact emails
dom...@chromium.org, fer...@chromium.org, kenji...@chromium.orgExplainer
https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.mdSpecification
NoneSummary
A JavaScript API for producing summaries of input text, backed by an AI language model.
Blink component
Blink>AI>SummarizationMotivation
Browsers and operating systems are increasingly expected to gain access to a language model. By exposing this built-in model, we avoid every website needing to download their own multi-gigabyte language model, or send input text to third-party APIs. The summarizer API in particular exposes a high-level API for interfacing with a language model in order to summarize inputs for a variety of use cases [1], in a way that does not depend on the specific language model in question. [1]: https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#summarizer-api
Initial public proposal
https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/163TAG review
None. (We intend to submit for TAG review after getting enough support to move to WICG.)TAG review status
PendingRisks
Interoperability and Compatibility
This feature has definite interoperability and compatibility risks, due to the likelihood that different implementations will use different language models, prompts, and fine-tunings, and even within a single implementation such as Chrome, these pieces will likely change over time. Additionally, not all browser and operating systems will have a built-in language model to expose, and not all devices will be able to run one. We are taking a variety of steps to attempt to mitigate these risks. For example, the specification is designed to allow the API to be backed by a cloud-based language model, which could help extend it to more users. And the high-level nature of the API, which hides the details of the specific language model, prompts, etc., makes it harder for developers to depend on specific outputs: they are just getting a summary, and not e.g. structured data. Finally, the API surface is designed with many clear points of failure, that encourage the developer to probe for capabilities ahead of time and fall back to other techniques if a capability is not available. Nevertheless, interoperability and compatibility risk remains high for these sorts of APIs, and we'll be closely monitoring it during the prototyping period.
Gecko: No signal
WebKit: No signal
Web developers: No signals
Other signals:
Activation
This feature would definitely benefit from having polyfills, backed by any of: cloud services, lazily-loaded on-device models using WebGPU, or the web developer's own server. We anticipate seeing an ecosystem of such polyfills grow as more developers experiment with this API.
WebView application risks
Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?
None
Debuggability
It is possible that giving DevTools more insight into the nondeterministic states of the model, e.g. random seeds, could help with debugging. See related discussion at https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/prompt-api/issues/9.
Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?
NoWe hope to work on web platform tests for this feature, but how much we can guarantee as testable beyond the surface API is unclear, given the nondeterministic nature of the output.
Flag name on chrome://flags
summarization-api-for-gemini-nanoFinch feature name
EnableAISummarizationAPIRequires code in //chrome?
FalseTracking bug
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/351744634Estimated milestones
No milestones specified