IMAGE GUIDED VIDEO THUMBNAIL GENERATION FOR E-COMMERCE APPLICATIONS

Systems and methods are provided for automatically generating a thumbnail for a video on an online shopping site. The disclosed technology automatically generates a thumbnail for a video, where the thumbnail represents an item but not necessarily content of the video. A thumbnail generator receives a video that describes the item and an ordered list of item images associated with the item used in an item listing. The thumbnail generator extracts video frames from the video based on sampling rules and determines similarity scores for the sampled video frames. A similarity score indicates a degree of similarity between content of a video frame and an item image. The thumbnail generator determines weighted similarity scores based item images and occurrences of sampled video frames in the video. The disclosed technology generates a thumbnail for the video by selecting a sample video frame based on the weighted similarity scores.