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Using AI to create directions from video transcripts

Article written by Adam Nelson, Learning Technologies Multimedia and Simulation Coordinator

If you struggle with typing out directions, or explaining a process, but you know how to have the conversation with someone face to face or walk them through the process. You can use AI to record a video and turn what you can easily explain, into text you can use in an email, script to read for a video, leaving a voicemail, or creating a handout for someone.

Using tools available through the college, you can record a video, have a transcript created of what you talked about, and have that transcript paired down to easy to follow steps or a simple paragraph.

Record a video and download the transcript

• Record a video directly in Panopto, or upload a video to Panopto that you recorded using software like Camtasia
• Panopto will use AI to create closed captions and a clean transcript of your audio (a transcript is different than closed captioning because it doesn't include time-stamps or other information, it only contains the text of what is spoken in the video
• Once your video is processed in Panopto, open the captions tab and download your transcript using the arrow in the top left corner of the captions pane

Copy the text from your transcript and paste into an AI chatbot with a prompt

• Open your transcript and copy the text
• Open your AI chatbot of choice, for my demonstration I will use Copilot
• Write a prompt such as "summarize the following text into a professional paragraph" and paste your transcript text
• For my example, I want to create step-by-step instructions I could use in an email. So my prompt includes "thinking step-by-step, summarize the following information in a professional manner"
• You can customize your prompt to match your audience. Include details "this information is for a college student audience" or "summarize the following information for a 7th grade reading level"

• The result will not be perfect, you are the expert and you will still need to make some changes but this is a great starting point
• In my example, the AI misspelled Northwood, it miss-transcribed two of the words I spoke, but with a few quick edits I have the step-by-step directions I was looking to create
• The chatbot will remember it's response, so once you have your result you can simply type "change your response to a 7th grade reading level" instead of having to re-do your entire prompt

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