The present disclosure relates to methods, systems, and non-transitory computer-readable media for generating a topic visual element for a portion of a digital video based on audio content and visual content of the digital video. For example, the disclosed systems can generate a map between words of the audio content and their corresponding timestamps from the digital video and then modify the map by associating importance weights with one or more of the words. Further, the disclosed systems can generate an additional map by associating words embedded in one or more video frames of the visual content with their corresponding timestamps. Based on these maps, the disclosed systems can identify a topic for a portion of the digital video (e.g., a portion currently previewed on a computing device), generate a topic visual element that includes the topic, and provide the topic visual element for display on a computing device.