Can ChatGPT Summarize a Video?

With video content dominating online platforms, summarizing videos quickly and accurately has become essential for students, professionals, and researchers. While ChatGPT cannot directly “watch” videos, it can effectively summarize video content—if you give it the right input. This guide walks through how to use ChatGPT to summarize a video, how to get transcripts, and why tools like VOMO AI can make the process even faster and more efficient.

1. Can ChatGPT Summarize a Video?

Yes—but not from the video file or link alone. ChatGPT requires the transcript of the video in order to generate a summary. Once you have that, ChatGPT can condense it into key points, summaries, and even action items with the right prompt.

2. Step One: Get the Transcript

Using YouTube’s Built-in Transcript:

• Open the YouTube video.

• Click on the three dots below the title.

• Select “Show transcript.”

• Copy the full transcript (you may need to clean out timestamps).

Using Third-Party Tools (for videos without transcripts):

• Notta or Tactiq: Paste the YouTube link to generate a transcript.

• VOMO AI (more on this below): Automatically imports and transcribes YouTube videos in one click.

3. Step Two: Paste the Transcript into ChatGPT

Once you have the transcript:

• Go to ChatGPT.

• Use a prompt like:

“You’re a professional content summarizer. Given the transcript of a video, your job is to extract and organize the key information clearly and concisely. Follow this format: Title, Key Takeaways (3–5 bullet points), Summary (3–5 sentences), and Action Items (if any).”

• Paste the full transcript after the prompt and submit.

4. Want a Faster Workflow? Try VOMO AI

Here’s where VOMO comes in—not only does it handle transcription, but it also summarizes the video and extracts key takeaways, action items, and more—without copy-pasting anything.

Watch this short demo to see how it works:

With VOMO, you:

• Just paste a YouTube link.

• Get a full transcript and structured summary instantly.

• Ask AI questions about the content (“What are the main arguments?” or “Write an email based on this”).

VOMO is ideal for meetings, interviews, lectures, or any long-form content—especially when you don’t want to manually move transcripts into ChatGPT or clean up text.

5. Best Practices When Using ChatGPT

• Clean Your Transcript: Remove timestamps and unrelated text to improve summary quality.

• Use Specific Prompts: Guide ChatGPT to focus on key takeaways, action items, or executive summaries.

• Always Review the Output: AI summaries can miss nuance—don’t skip the human review step.

While ChatGPT can summarize a video effectively, it depends entirely on having a clean, complete transcript. Tools like VOMO AI simplify the entire workflow—letting you go from video to summary in one step. Whether you’re a researcher trying to extract insights or a marketer writing content from video sources, combining transcription and summarization tools can save you hours every week.