Build Your Own AI Text Summarizer in Python with OpenAI API

With the amount of content we consume daily, summarization tools are becoming essential. Imagine pasting in any long article, report, or blog post and instantly getting a concise, clear summary.

In this tutorial, you’ll build a Python script that:

• Accepts a text file or URL

• Sends it to OpenAI’s API

• Returns a short, readable summary

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Step 1: Install Dependencies

bashCopyEditpip install openai requests beautifulsoup4

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Step 2: Get Your API Key

1. Create an account at OpenAI

2. Copy your API key from the dashboard

3. Store it as an environment variable:

bashCopyEditexport OPENAI_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"

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Step 3: Summarizer Code

pythonCopyEditimport os
import openai
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

openai.api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")

def fetch_text_from_url(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")
    return " ".join([p.get_text() for p in soup.find_all("p")])

def summarize_text(text, max_words=100):
    prompt = f"Summarize the following text in under {max_words} words:\n\n{text}"

    response = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": prompt}],
        temperature=0.5
    )
    return response.choices[0].message["content"].strip()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    url = input("Enter article URL: ")
    article_text = fetch_text_from_url(url)
    summary = summarize_text(article_text, max_words=80)
    print("\nSummary:\n", summary)

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How It Works

1. The script uses requests and BeautifulSoup to scrape text from the given URL.

2. The extracted text is sent to OpenAI with a summarization prompt.

3. The API responds with a concise summary.

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Example Run

bashCopyEditEnter article URL: https://example.com/ai-news
Summary:
AI adoption is accelerating across industries, driven by efficiency gains, automation, and new consumer applications. Ethical concerns and regulation remain key challenges.

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Real-World Applications

• Summarizing tech news articles

• Creating digest versions of research papers

• Automating newsletter content

• Shortening meeting transcripts or long emails

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Bonus: Turn It Into a CLI Tool

You can enhance this with argparse to allow:

bashCopyEditpython summarize.py --url https://example.com/article --words 60

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Conclusion

In just a few lines of Python, you can create a fully functional AI summarizer to help you process information faster. By combining this with scheduling tools, you could even set up automated daily summaries for your favorite sources.