Link: AI researcher scrapes usable data from a 35-second screen recording for less than one cent via Google Gemini

AI researcher Simon Willison effectively transformed a 35-second screen recording of 12 emails into a spreadsheet using Google AI Studio. Surprisingly, the process was both accurate and cost-effective, amounting to less than 10% of 1 cent.

Willison opted for an AI solution instead of manually extracting data from the emails.

He used a simple AI prompt to convert the video into JSON format, which was then converted to CSV for easy spreadsheet use.

The result was unexpectedly perfect, with no errors in the data extraction.

Despite his skepticism, everything worked flawlessly.

Although the service is currently free, Willison calculated the potential costs using Gemini 1.5 Flash 002, accidentally avoiding the more expensive Gemini 1.5 Pro.

Even if charged, the cost for processing would have been merely 1/10th of a cent.

Such video scraping tools offer a powerful, easy-to-use alternative to traditional data extraction methods.

They remove the need for specialized programming knowledge and enable data collection from various sources without typical restrictions.

Even with these tools, privacy concerns linger, especially with tools like Microsoft's Recall and Rewind AI which store screen captures locally.

These concerns underline the potentially vulnerable nature of collecting and storing personal data on personal devices. #

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