PaperTok: Exploring the Use of Generative AI for Creating Short-form Videos for Research Communication
This addresses the challenge for researchers in disseminating scholarly work to broader audiences, though it is incremental as it builds on existing generative AI tools for content creation.
The paper tackled the problem of researchers lacking time and skills to create engaging short-form videos for research communication by developing PaperTok, a generative AI system that automates script and audiovisual content generation from academic papers, with user studies (N=18 and N=100) showing it helps create engaging and informative videos.
The dissemination of scholarly research is critical, yet researchers often lack the time and skills to create engaging content for popular media such as short-form videos. To address this gap, we explore the use of generative AI to help researchers transform their academic papers into accessible video content. Informed by a formative study with science communicators and content creators (N=8), we designed PaperTok, an end-to-end system that automates the initial creative labor by generating script options and corresponding audiovisual content from a source paper. Researchers can then refine based on their preferences with further prompting. A mixed-methods user study (N=18) and crowdsourced evaluation (N=100) demonstrate that PaperTok's workflow can help researchers create engaging and informative short-form videos. We also identified the need for more fine-grained controls in the creation process. To this end, we offer implications for future generative tools that support science outreach.