Should I Build It Should I Build It
12 May 2025
Artificial Intelligence Education

An ai software to convert YouTube, Udemy, Coursera, transcript into ...

...useful notes

Confidence
Engagement
Net use signal
Net buy signal

Idea type: Run Away

Multiple attempts have failed with clear negative feedback. Continuing down this path would likely waste your time and resources when better opportunities exist elsewhere.

Should You Build It?

Don't build it.

Your are here

You're entering a crowded space where many have tried to automatically generate notes from video and course content, evidenced by the 20 similar products we found. This indicates a potentially significant demand, but also highlights the intense competition. Unfortunately, in this area the overall sentiment and feedback has been negative. Given the multiple failed attempts and the clear negative feedback received by similar products, this puts you in the 'Run Away' category. Continuing on this path without significant differentiation and a deep understanding of past failures is likely to waste your time and resources.

Recommendations

  1. Thoroughly analyze the negative feedback from similar products, paying close attention to the points of failure. The criticism summaries show recurring issues like inaccurate AI-generated content, ethical concerns around content usage without creator consent, and technical bugs. Identify the core reasons for user dissatisfaction in those failed attempts. For example, one product was criticized for a buggy web app, indicating the importance of technical polish and user experience.
  2. Explore adjacent problems where your skills might be more effectively applied. Instead of directly converting videos to notes, consider focusing on improving the quality of transcriptions (addressing the 'Whisper for transcription' suggestion in one discussion) or developing tools for creators to better manage and monetize their content. Look for unmet needs within the broader educational content ecosystem.
  3. If you've already built a prototype, assess whether its underlying technology can be repurposed for a different, more viable application. Could the AI algorithms be adapted for content summarization in a less ethically fraught context? Or could the transcription capabilities be used for accessibility purposes?
  4. Conduct user interviews with at least three individuals who have used similar products to understand their specific pain points and unmet needs. Focus on understanding their workflows and identify opportunities to provide them a significantly better experience. Ask about the format of notes they'd prefer, or the features they wish existing apps offered to better inform your direction.
  5. Based on your research and analysis, consider pivoting to a new idea that addresses a genuine need in the education or content creation space, while avoiding the pitfalls of previous attempts in automated note generation. For example, focus on curating AI-generated content that gives back to creators and provides a good user experience, based on the feedback of previous attempts.

Questions

  1. What specific ethical considerations have you accounted for regarding the use of copyrighted video and course content, and how will you ensure fair compensation or recognition for the original creators?
  2. Given the high number of similar products that have faced criticism, what unique value proposition will your product offer to overcome the existing user dissatisfaction and stand out in the market?
  3. How will you address the technical challenges, such as content variability and accuracy of AI-generated summaries, to deliver a consistently high-quality user experience that avoids the pitfalls of previous attempts?

Your are here

You're entering a crowded space where many have tried to automatically generate notes from video and course content, evidenced by the 20 similar products we found. This indicates a potentially significant demand, but also highlights the intense competition. Unfortunately, in this area the overall sentiment and feedback has been negative. Given the multiple failed attempts and the clear negative feedback received by similar products, this puts you in the 'Run Away' category. Continuing on this path without significant differentiation and a deep understanding of past failures is likely to waste your time and resources.

Recommendations

  1. Thoroughly analyze the negative feedback from similar products, paying close attention to the points of failure. The criticism summaries show recurring issues like inaccurate AI-generated content, ethical concerns around content usage without creator consent, and technical bugs. Identify the core reasons for user dissatisfaction in those failed attempts. For example, one product was criticized for a buggy web app, indicating the importance of technical polish and user experience.
  2. Explore adjacent problems where your skills might be more effectively applied. Instead of directly converting videos to notes, consider focusing on improving the quality of transcriptions (addressing the 'Whisper for transcription' suggestion in one discussion) or developing tools for creators to better manage and monetize their content. Look for unmet needs within the broader educational content ecosystem.
  3. If you've already built a prototype, assess whether its underlying technology can be repurposed for a different, more viable application. Could the AI algorithms be adapted for content summarization in a less ethically fraught context? Or could the transcription capabilities be used for accessibility purposes?
  4. Conduct user interviews with at least three individuals who have used similar products to understand their specific pain points and unmet needs. Focus on understanding their workflows and identify opportunities to provide them a significantly better experience. Ask about the format of notes they'd prefer, or the features they wish existing apps offered to better inform your direction.
  5. Based on your research and analysis, consider pivoting to a new idea that addresses a genuine need in the education or content creation space, while avoiding the pitfalls of previous attempts in automated note generation. For example, focus on curating AI-generated content that gives back to creators and provides a good user experience, based on the feedback of previous attempts.

Questions

  1. What specific ethical considerations have you accounted for regarding the use of copyrighted video and course content, and how will you ensure fair compensation or recognition for the original creators?
  2. Given the high number of similar products that have faced criticism, what unique value proposition will your product offer to overcome the existing user dissatisfaction and stand out in the market?
  3. How will you address the technical challenges, such as content variability and accuracy of AI-generated summaries, to deliver a consistently high-quality user experience that avoids the pitfalls of previous attempts?

  • Confidence: High
    • Number of similar products: 20
  • Engagement: Medium
    • Average number of comments: 7
  • Net use signal: -1.4%
    • Positive use signal: 7.7%
    • Negative use signal: 9.1%
  • Net buy signal: -4.1%
    • Positive buy signal: 0.5%
    • Negative buy signal: 4.6%

This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.

The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.

The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.

The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.

Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.

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Hello HN! I'm Jia Yi, a co-founder of FutureNotes (https://www.futurenotes.ai/). Our platform converts videos directly into notes, using traditional machine learning for video parsing (generative AI is still too slow and expensive for the volume of data involved) and LLM technology for text summarization. Here are some samples we produced based on 'Introduction to Deep Learning' by MIT (it's a great lecture series, you may want to check it out!): https://www.futurenotes.ai/samples.As an avid learner, I often turn to videos for knowledge, but over time I realised that video didn't suit my learning style - I prefer notes enriched with helpful images that can be skimmed through at my own pace. Moreover, I wanted to keep a personal record of the content I had encountered, something quickly referenceable for recapping what I've learnt, but a bunch of video links or thumbnails isn't an optimal format for that. With these issues in mind I developed the core scripts of FutureNotes' last year, primarily for my friends and myself.This year I decided to build a web service around it, thinking that there might be others out there like me who prefer a more text-based means of information exchange. The current version of FutureNotes is a basic implementation, but it contains the core functionality of video-to-notes conversion. You can either upload an existing video or record your screen, and indicate the email(s) you'll like the notes to be delivered to (in both word and pdf formats). I am hoping the email functionality allows people to use it as a form of communication as well (perhaps an alternative to traditional email or Slack videos)? I look forward to hearing about how people use FutureNotes, and welcome suggestions on how it can be made more useful!Videos less than a minute long will be processed into notes for free. In addition, to celebrate Cyber Monday (and the launch), we'll be having a 40% discount for the entire week (27 Nov to 3 Dec). I hope this encourages more people to give FutureNotes a try and feedback :)One more thing, if there are any popular suggestions for specific videos that people would like to see as converted into notes, I'll do my best to process the video and upload it to samples page of our website (https://www.futurenotes.ai/samples) for everyone to view. Thank you so much for your time!

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I made an app that turns YouTube videos and articles into a course

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Hey everyone! I'm a solo developer and I made this app during my free time after graduating high school.studymap.ai uses AI to create structured courses from start to finish, with lessons, project ideas, and links to useful internet resources. You can either describe what you want to learn or just give it the link to any YouTube video or article and it will create organized chapters.I had this idea after struggling to learn new skills online, like Linux, new programming languages, etc. I found myself browsing for hours just to find the perfect resources to get started with actually learning. Once I realized I could use the power of GPT-4 and web-searching APIs to create a course for me, I had to make it into an app.If you visit my website there are some free courses I generated for you to try out. Let me know what you think!

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YouTube is the greatest learning resource in the world. Yet it doesn't provide any tools to help you learn from videos.I built a simple app that turns YouTube videos into structured learning material using AI. It generates a summary, quiz and flashcards from video content, meaning you can learn from anything (well, at least any YouTube video).Try it out. Would be happy to keep building features based on feedback!

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Hi HN,For 4 years I've worked on the psychology of learning following a CompSci degree with an AI minor from back in 2019. I love the future of effective learning that is coming.This is a way for you to study for specific exams, lectures and videos. You upload your content, and get specific, citing flashcard exercises delivered in a fun way.Not only can you view the timestamp in the video that a question was generated from, for example, but your answers are used to inform a "Compilation stage".The Compilation stage uses your choices of answers (and wrong answers), as well as data on when you clicked to "Explain why", to summarise your knowledge gaps and create a specific action plan for studying the next day - a plan which conceptually understandsInvolved in this tool are transformer models, including the classics (BERT, T5, etc), the new kid (ChatGPT), and embeddings (for balls-amazing lessons segmentation). One last thing, we have two different UK and US brands, because of cultural differences. Answer one question: Have you ever been cheered on by a website before?Would love to hear your thoughts. You can try it for free with a PDF, or youtube video, respectively at studywand.com and studywand.com/video

Good but web app buggy, needs more display options.

Web app is buggy, needs more display options.

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Introducing YTClass, AI-powered platform for enhanced YouTube learning.

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