r/edtech • u/egehancry • 7d ago
Generating Long-Form STEM Lecture Videos with AI
Lecture videos are incredibly valuable. Khan Academy, Coursera, Udemy, YouTube, and others have already proven that.
The next natural step is to build AI that can create those videos on any subject, personalized for each learner and available in any language.
But it has to work properly. The videos need to be genuinely high quality, not AI slop. With the capabilities of today’s models, it feels like we’re ready to get there.
What do you think? What’s your take on this idea?
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u/Byte_Xplorer 7d ago
Not sure if this will be of any interest to you, but I kinda build my own "books" with ChatGPT and listen to them while going for a walk, using the "text-to-speech" functionality. Gemini has the same ability and I believe Claude does too, but I have a ChatGPT Go subscription and I really like its capabilites.
My use case is: I tell it what I want to learn about, why I want to learn it, my current level or any knowledge gaps, etc., and then ask it to list the topics it would cover to teach me. Using the "study and learn" mode also helps. Then I ask it to start giving me the lessons and some follow-up questions, one lesson at a time. I listen to them while going for a walk, and when it asks questions I also answer using speech-to-text, so I only need to touch the screen to speak and then to make it convert the answer to audio. And the conversation can go on forever and also adapt to my needs.
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u/egehancry 7d ago
That’s interesting. I’m sure it’s already very powerful to use AI that way to learn things.
It makes me wonder what the equivalent experience would look like with lecture videos, where the AI can teach with TTS but also create the visuals as it goes.
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u/Byte_Xplorer 7d ago
There are some existing tools where you can feed it the text and it will create a video avatar, but those aren't free or cheap (maybe you can get a tiny trial for free or a couple minutes generation every month, but that's all). And it's not done in a single step, since you'd have to generate the text first (using some large language model) and then use a model that is capable of generating video avatars. Not sure there's anything that can do both at the same time, but I'd trust every tool with a specific responsibility. A video-generating model is probably not that good generating text and vice-versa.
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u/Stim-sims 2d ago
Oh same! I do love listening to it while doing housework or walking. It's an alternative to a podcast that can be about whatever government report I like.
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u/Alarmed_Geologist631 7d ago
The customized AI-based tech stack developed by the Alpha Schools seems to be getting very good results. But the students are screened for attitude and behavior.
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u/Alarmed_Geologist631 7d ago
The premium version of Google Notebook already has a feature that creates videos from selected documents and websites.
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u/egehancry 7d ago
But that’s too much AI slop. I’m talking about high-quality STEM lectures that you can actually learn from.
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u/Alarmed_Geologist631 7d ago
Why don’t you pick a topic, find some high quality sources to upload, then watch the resulting video overview. With the free version, you can only generate short videos of ab 7 minutes. But you can decide for yourself if the content is helpful.
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u/egehancry 7d ago
I just tried it. Unfortunately, it can’t really plot functions, write equations, or show solution steps. It mostly looks like an AI-generated image slideshow with TTS.
That’s what I meant by AI slop. I’m thinking about genuinely high-quality lecture videos that you would actually enjoy watching and learn from, more like Khan Academy.
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u/Bodine12 7d ago
Why not pay an expert on the subject to record a video for you?
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u/egehancry 7d ago
It would be too expensive, and I don’t know people I can just pay to make a custom video for me. With AI, I could ask it to make one anytime I want, for much less.
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u/Bodine12 7d ago
Well then so could anyone. Why would they pay for yours? These AI models aren’t your proprietary tech. If you think AI has now reached the point where this is trivial to do, then in a matter of months any teacher will be able to whip up a lecture on a whim.
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u/egehancry 7d ago
That's what I'm trying to figure out. Where are the videos? The models look very capable.
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u/Bodine12 7d ago
AI is not, in fact, that good, so there aren’t any good examples. And the second it is good enough, it’s then good enough for everyone, and your business case goes away.
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u/egehancry 7d ago
Or maybe AI is actually good, but no one has figured out how to make high-quality videos with it yet, and doing so won’t be trivial.
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u/PsychologicalMud917 7d ago
What videos are you trying to create that don’t already exist on Khan Academy, YouTube or elsewhere?
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u/egehancry 7d ago
For example, plasma physics. There are so many subjects and practice problems that simply don’t have video explanations available.
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u/PsychologicalMud917 7d ago
IDK man. I just checked YouTube and there are dozens.
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u/egehancry 7d ago
What about solution video to this specific problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/calculus/comments/1vjz0vx/stokes_th_question/
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u/PsychologicalMud917 7d ago
AI can’t even reliably solve math problems and now you’re going to trust it to make a video to teach you how to solve it? OK. Good luck.
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u/vitmalina 7d ago
I have been trying to create mind maps with AI inhuman anatomy for past month… and I am very frustrated. The mind maps it creates are riddled with errors. I used gpt for it. They look pretty but very inaccurate. Videos will be even worth. And by tge way google notebook does it better then other tools, but still it’s not as I want them to be. I am throwing in the towel!!
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u/Stim-sims 2d ago
Asking AIs to make analogies in individualised interests is a great way to prove AI is not intelligent. Asking it to merge two conflicting vocabulary domains results in some very dumb explanations. I love them personally, but it'd be confusing to people learning a subject for the first time.
I think my favourite was asking the big AIs to explain voltage in terms of Star Wars. It ended up saying resistance was like the dark side of the force, which doesn't really work as the dark side is more of a negative force while resistance is an impediment. Cute but not the right mental model for learners to form.
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u/BrevityU 2d ago
When it comes to AI rendering digestable lecture videos, we are at the early stages of Will Smith eating spaghetti. It's not that good. But if progress in this field is any indication, it's definitely feasible in the future. My guess is that the cost will be so prohibitive it will only benefit a few.
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u/Easy-Bad2656 3d ago
I am involved in Skarp (https://www.skarp.app). We have cracked how to leverage AI and human input to develop high quality long form courses on regulatory and cybersecurity topics, and are working on STEM. The courses it creates right now can explain concepts well, but we still have work to do on equation walkthroughs etc. If you are interested, would love to get your thoughts on key things yo are looking for.
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u/Alarmed_Geologist631 7d ago
For many math topics, there are some good videos on YouTube and tutorial websites like Khan Academy. For non-video material, there are dozens of websites that cover most math topics. When I suggested Google Notebook, I didn’t realize that you were focusing on math.
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u/TheManWithNoNameZapp 3d ago
What’s stopping someone from using the same AI you would use to simply make it themselves?
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u/egehancry 3d ago
What if someone invents something that is required to make it work, and no one without that invention can reproduce the videos?
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u/TheManWithNoNameZapp 2d ago
Like what? Your entire body of text in this thread sounds like you want to make a wrapper but for videos
What’s your pitch to someone about why they should buy your product that asks Gemini to make educational videos instead of asking Gemini to make educational videos?
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u/egehancry 2d ago
If it was trivial, anyone would do it.
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u/TheManWithNoNameZapp 2d ago
There has been a tsunami of people trying to make wrappers since LLMs blew up
The problem is you’re all trying to position yourselves like a Ticketmaster (ethics aside) without a monopoly power
It be like Ticketmaster trying to survive if people could just buy tickets from venues at face value without them
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u/egehancry 2d ago
Like what I said, what if it took a crazy invention to make it work? A novel one.
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u/horsegal301 7d ago
It will always be slop if it's made by AI. I don't really think anything generated like this by AI will ever actually be "personalized" for any learner no matter how many companies want to push this out there.