Designed to assist academicians, students, and analysts, the platform uses models like Gemini and Claude to summarise documents, and Sarvam’s Text-to-Speech engine to generate voiceovers.
A team of researchers at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Hyderabad) has developed an AI platform, SARAL AI, that can convert research papers into summarised video presentations.
The platform will be handy for academicians, students, researchers, and analysts who cull out information from research and academic papers to build PowerPoint presentations. Although a video-based presentation is also offered, it is still in its early stages, lacking images and animation.
Inspired by NotebookLM, built with Generative AI
Prof. Ponnurangan Kumaraguru, who led the team, said that the slides are static. “There is a huge scope of enhancements, including images and videos. Production of posters, a common feature in the academic world, can also be a possibility,” he said.
He said Google’s NotebookLM, which helps in summarising documents and produces audio conversations, inspired the team in developing the product.
The team also comprised Lakshmanan Natraj, Rahul Sundar, Imandi Sai Ganesh, Arihant Rastogi, and Vishnu Sathwik. “We wanted to create an application that would automatically take a research paper as its input and generate a 3-4 minute concise video based on slides in 11 Indian languages,” he said.
Customisable outputs based on paper structure
The platform utilises generative AI engines, such as Gemini and Claude, to generate the summaries.
Kumaraguru said that once the script is in slide format, Sarvam’s Text-to-Speech engine is used to generate audio in the desired voice (male or female) and language.
The solution culls out relevant information to build slides around – Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion and a Conclusion, the typical index items in any research paper. The output allows the user to customise the bullet points in each slide. The users, then, can proceed to create a video and audio (with a voiceover).
What next
He said SARAL is one of the first tools developed under the domain name democratiseresearch.in. The team is considering a tool that can bridge the gap between the industry and the scientific community, facilitating the transfer of new knowledge and patents.
He stated that a platform would facilitate better technology transfer by bridging the gap between researchers who produce papers and an industry often unaware of these advancements.
The SARAL team has decided to organise hackathons and competitions around the concept of ‘democratisation of research’ to promote it.
Published on July 29, 2025
