this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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EDIT: That was an undeservedly harsh phrasing. The matter touched a nerve, but that's not OPs fault. I'll clarify, but leave the original comment at the end for transparency.
I'm not a fan of videos and much prefer having texts to read. I find them more comfortable to process, interrupt, resume, search for a specific section and consume while not on WiFi (due to a limited data plan, which YT tends to eat through).
Both professionally and privately, I have been frustrated by the number of tutorials and guides that are presented as videos where articles would work well enough. They seem to be more popular too, to the point that useful articles are buried deeper in the results.
I like textual summaries of interesting videos, because I'm curious, but often not enough to warrant clicking a YouTube link. I understand people's frustration with AI ripoffs stealing content, but if the original content creator doesn't cater to a textual medium, then someone else steps into that gap, I don't feel like it's so much ripping off as adapting to a different medium.
If the original creator offered a textual summary, and someone stole that to sell it as their own, I'd share the frustration. But if they didn't, you can't really steal what never existed.
Not that I'm a fan of AI slop specifically, but it's better than nothing. If I can't have a human one, I'd rather have an AI transcription than be excluded.
Sorry about my rudeness. This is a sore spot, but being snarky doesn't help anyone.
Original comment below
Does someone have a content description so I can read instead of having to watch it?
Oh wait, here's an article, nevermind.
For anyone that couldn't bother reading the above comment, I've given a summary...
No, it's about me not being able to arbitrarily sit down and watch a video due to various issues like attention span, hearing issues*, limited mobile data and being at work, where an article or summary is much easier and faster to read and can be interrupted at a moment's notice unlike a video which I'll have to pause, scrub back through if I missed a detail and wait for it to get to the right point, and I can more easily search for stuff.
My point is that there seems to be a habit of dismissing the value of textual summaries in favour of "just watch the video" in much of the online world, where I'll be looking for a quick explanation and get presented with some video instead. Some people don't do so well with videos so it's not "just" watching the video.
There are advantages to text that I hate seeing people ignore.
(Besides, how would you know I'm incapable rather than just unwilling; or why would you assume either in the first place instead of considering inability?)
* That issue applies to voice messages and phone calls too. While videos occasionally have good CC, I haven't found them to be reliable or ubiquitous enough. Additionally, they present the speech in fragments and usually are just as hard to search through. Either way, videos are a "sometimes" thing for me.
Preach brother. One of the best uses of generative AI for me would be transcribing videos into an article or tutorial depending on the content.
Yup, I love this https://www.videogist.co/
If it can make accurate transcriptions, sure. I'd enjoy the option of sending a link to an autotranscriber and get a conveniently readable version out of it.