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HERCULES: Hierarchical Embedding-based Recursive Clustering Using LLMs for Efficient Summarization

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The explosive growth of complex datasets across various modalities necessitates advanced analytical tools that not only group data effectively but also provide human-understandable insights into the discovered structures. We introduce HERCULES (Hierarchical Embedding-based Recursive Clustering Using LLMs for Efficient Summarization), a modality-agnostic software architecture that natively supports hierarchical k-means clustering of diverse data types, including text, images, and numeric data (processed one modality per run). HERCULES constructs a cluster hierarchy by recursively applying k-means clustering, starting from individual data points at level 0. A key innovation is its deep integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate semantically rich titles and descriptions for clusters at each level of the hierarchy, significantly enhancing interpretability. The algorithm supports two main representation modes: ‘direct’ mode, which clusters based on original data embeddings or scaled numeric features, and ‘description’ mode, which clusters based on embeddings derived from LLM-generated summaries. Users can provide a ‘topic_seed’ to guide LLM-generated summaries towards specific themes. An interactive visualization tool facilitates thorough analysis and understanding of the clustering results. We demonstrate HERCULES’s capabilities and discuss its potential for extracting meaningful, hierarchical knowledge from complex datasets.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcce.2026.04.002
Language: English
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $700
OpenAlex ID: W4414988049
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