Automation of culling process

You do not need plugin for this purpose. Moreover current level of software/AI is not enough to "say" which image is good which is bad.
The method I use is sample and quite strait. You select Survey mode: View->Survey or press N. Then Photo->Auto Advance to make LR switch to the next image when you rate current one. And use numbers from 1 to 5 to rate (usual values are 1 for "bad", 5 for "very good". After this create smart collection which will include all images with rate 3 or more (for example).

Et voila, you have all selected/good images in one collection.

I use a plain image viewer (Gwenview) with four keyboard shortcuts defined on four horizontally aligned keys on my keyboard. These are Previous/Next/100% zoom/Delete. Delete automatically goes to the next picture. In normal operation index/middle/ring fingers rest on the Next/100% zoom/Delete.

If I understood your question correctly, you are looking for a tool to reduce the time spent during the culling process.

You can use software like FilterPixel to cull your photos automatically. (Full disclosure, I am the founder and CEO of FilterPixel)

How does this work?

Step 1:

Import Files & Create Your Project

When you come from a photo shoot, you can create a project & can drag and drop the folder containing Raw Files or JPEG's into FilterPixel App.

Step 2:

Use AI To Filter Out Bad Photos

The app automatically find photos with less focus quality & eye quality and filter them out into accepted, rejected, warnings & unlabelled.

1. Accepted: FilterPixel AI provides control to the photographer to accept any photo, so it doesn't accept any photo by default.

2. Rejected: Photos that are completely out of focus & have closed eyes are classified into rejected view automatically.

3. Warnings: Photos with minor quality issues such as soft focus are classified into warning view automatically.

4. Unlabelled: Photos without any issues are classified into Unlabelled view automatically.

Step 3:

Quickly Select Your Best Photos With AI Metrics & FaceViews

Every photo is provided with a quality metrics which can be used to narrow down your selections.

Step 4:

Export Photos to Lightroom or Local Folder

After your culling is done, you can export your photos to Lightroom or to a local folder on your hardrive.

You can find more about it at filterpixel.com.

Not sure if someone is still looking for a solution to this, but we've been working on a tool that addresses this exact problem: AfterShoot.

AfterShoot will automatically go through all your images and star-rate and color code the keepers vs rejects. Since everyone has a different workflow, it allows for option to choose what star rating or color code is to be assigned to the keepers vs rejects.

The keepers and rejects are also keyworded for locating them easily in LightRoom.

This is also extremely useful if you shoot a lot of duplicates (that OP mentioned that they do), as AfterShoot can also identify the duplicate images and mark the best image(s) from a set of duplicates!

To use the app, you simply select the folder containing your RAW/JPEG images that you need to cull through:

Select your preferences for the cull:

Sit back and relax:

Here's also a quick video showcasing the complete culling workflow with AfterShoot:

AfterShoot: Workflow

We're currently in beta and if anyone wants to try the app for themselves, you can head over to the site and download it for free!

https://aftershoot.co/

Personally, I'd never trust a computer to determine if an image is acceptable or not.

For years, I've used a three pass method where each pass takes longer per image, but has fewer images remaining. In the old days, I used the same basic process on prints from film, but here I'll describe how I do it in Lightroom.

Before starting, I recommend at least 24-48 hours before looking at your images. This gives your mind a little time to forget its expectations so you can look at the images for what they are rather than what you expected them to be.

First is the pick/reject pass. This is extremely fast because all you're doing is giving your gut reaction. Only 1-2 seconds per image. The question I ask is "Is this image worth my time?" You'll eliminate anything with major technical issues, blinking subjects, and anything you just don't like. On a 1000 shot shoot, I generally eliminate 500-600 of the images and it takes only 15-20 minutes.

Next, filter to only show the pics, select them all and mark them 3 stars. The work through the group and ask yourself "Is this image better than my average or worse than my average?" I keep my fingers on 2 and 4 and either leave them alone or increase or decrease the rating accordingly. This process takes about 10 minutes and I end up with about 100 3 star and 200-250 each for 2 and 4 stars.

Finally, filter for 4's. These should be the best shots you got, and now you look through them and ask "Is there anything special that sets this image apart?" I'll generally revise a few of them down because they aren't up to scratch, but generally about a third of them will be marked 5 stars.

When all is said and done, I preset the 5 star images to the customer along with anything in the 4's that I need to get proper coverage. In a pinch, I might grab a 3 if it's something too important to miss, but in the end I might present 75-100 images to the customer per 1000 shots and the culling process takes less than an hour.