Tarija Buried in Hail After Massive Thunderstorm in Bolivia

This blog post explains what to do when an AI assistant reports that it cannot access a link and asks you to paste the article text instead.

I’ll walk through why this happens, quick steps you can take to get an accurate summary, and practical tips for preparing content so automated summarization is fast, safe, and reliable.

Table of Contents

Why an AI assistant can’t access linked content

Modern conversational AI systems often run in environments without direct web browsing or with restricted access to external links for privacy, security, and reproducibility reasons.

When you paste a URL, the assistant may respond that it “wasn’t able to access the text from that link,” which simply means it can’t fetch or parse that webpage on your behalf.

This is not a failure of the model’s intelligence—it’s a limitation of deployment and design.

For organizations handling sensitive content, blocking direct web access reduces risk.

For others, the tool may be optimized to process user-supplied text rather than perform web scraping.

How to respond: immediate steps to get a reliable summary

When an assistant asks you to paste the text, you can enable a quick and accurate summarization by following a few simple practices.

Below are actionable steps that save time and improve the quality of the output:

Copy and paste the full article text if copyright and privacy rules allow. Longer inputs give the assistant more context and precision.

Provide key metadata — title, author, publication date, and source — so the summary can be properly framed.

Specify length and style you want: for example, “10-sentence summary” or “brief executive summary for a manager.”

Note any focus areas — e.g., methodology, results, implications, or quotes to retain.

Best practices for preparing text for AI summarization

Small preparation steps yield big improvements in the output.

Before pasting, remove irrelevant navigation elements, ads, or unrelated comments.

If the article is long, consider highlighting the most important sections or providing paragraph numbers where emphasis should be placed.

Always verify copyright permissions before pasting proprietary or paid content.

If you cannot share the full article, include a short excerpt and a precise request about which aspects to summarize.

Example prompt templates you can use

To accelerate the process, use one of these clear, copyable templates when interacting with an assistant:

Full-article summary: “Here is the full article text. Please provide a 10-sentence summary highlighting the main findings and implications for policy makers.”

Excerpt and focus: “I can only paste an excerpt. Please summarize paragraphs 3–6 and explain the authors’ main argument in two bullets.”

Professional brief: “Summarize this article into a 150-word executive brief suitable for a technical newsletter, focusing on methods and results.”

Why this workflow matters for organizations

Using the paste-and-summarize approach protects organizational security and ensures the assistant works with exactly the inputs you authorize.

It also increases reproducibility: the summary reflects the text you provided, so you can audit and verify outputs easily.

Final tips

When an AI says it can’t access a link, treat it as an invitation to supply the material directly.

By pasting the text, providing context, and using concise templates, you’ll get accurate, usable summaries quickly.

If you’re unsure about copyright or privacy, ask the assistant for guidance on how to provide a compliant excerpt.

Need a template adapted to your organization’s workflow?

Share your use case and I’ll provide a formatted prompt you can deploy immediately.

Here is the source article for this story: See it: Bolivian city buried in hail after massive thunderstorm sweeps through