Contact emails

dome...@chromium.org, fer...@chromium.org, kenjibah...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md

Specification

None yet, although we'll be writing one during the experimentation period.

Summary

A JavaScript API for producing summaries of input text, backed by an AI
language model.

Blink component

Blink>AI>Summarization
<https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component:Blink%3EAI%3ESummarization>

TAG review

https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/991

TAG review status

Pending

Risks
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 browsers and operating systems will have a built-in language model
to expose, and not all devices will be powerful enough to run one
effectively.

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. This approach could extend the functionality to
a wider range of devices and users. The API is designed to abstract away
the specifics of the underlying language model, including prompts and
fine-tuning. This prevents developers from relying on specific outputs,
ensuring they receive a generalized summary rather than structured data
that might vary across implementations. 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 (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1067
)

WebKit: No signal (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/393)

Web developers: Mixed signals (https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/163).
Prototyping with partners behind a flag revealed enthusiasm and many
prototypes built, from which we drew the discussion of potential use cases
[1]. Feedback on the WICG thread was more mixed. Some themes we saw
include: asking for more capabilities (e.g. full prompting of a language
model instead of higher-level APIs (our response at [2]); multi-modal
support); desire to make sure the API actually works robustly in many
real-world use cases; removal of any safety/ethical safeguards; and
confusion about client-side vs. cloud APIs.

[1]:
https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#summarizer-api

[2]:
https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#directly-exposing-a-prompt-api)
<https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#directly-exposing-a-prompt-api);>

Other signals:

Activation

This feature would definitely benefit from having polyfills, backed by any
of: cloud services, lazily-loaded client-side 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


Goals for experimentation

We're most interested in feedback on whether the summarization quality we
can provide is useful to sites, and whether the options we've defined for
controlling the summarization are useful. Additionally, we want to learn
about the impact of the current API's limitations, e.g. maximum input
length, to determine where we should spend our best effort lifting those
limits.

The origin trial will be limited to English-language input to start. We are
hoping to add support for more languages over time. Learning how much of a
limitation this is, and which languages ought to be prioritized, will also
be helpful.

Finally, we're also interested in feedback about the API shape and ease of
use.

Ongoing technical constraints

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.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac,
Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No. Not all platforms will come with a language model. In particular, in
the initial stages we are focusing on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests
<https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/testing/web_platform_tests.md>
?

No. We 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. The explainer discusses this in
https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#specifications-and-tests
.

Flag name on chrome://flags

summarization-api-for-gemini-nano

Finch feature name

EnableAISummarizationAPI

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/351744634

Estimated milestones

Origin trial desktop first

131

Origin trial desktop last

136

DevTrial on desktop

129


Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5193953788559360?gate=5082928917512192

Links to previous Intent discussions

Intent to Prototype:
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAM0wra8iMt24s_jP9Ng9_RKU3cH4wFywAt00kitJCeMJ3CaUAw%40mail.gmail.com


This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status
<https://chromestatus.com/>.

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