Lecture Notes: Building an Automated AI Newsletter System

Introduction

• Presenter: Nick
• Goal: Build an automated end-to-end AI newsletter system
• Platforms: Reddit for content sourcing, MailChimp for newsletter distribution
• Purpose: Demonstrate the step-by-step process of building the system

System Overview

1. Content Sourcing

   • Source content from popular AI-related subreddits (e.g., Singularity, Artificial Intelligence, OpenAI)
   • Scraping: Use a service like Appify to scrape Reddit posts
   • Filter posts based on relevance using AI (consider upvotes, downvotes, comments)
   • Store posts in a database (Google Sheets) with unique IDs for object permanence

2. Content Curation

   • Filter content using AI
   • Summarize posts using AI
   • Write new content based on summaries

3. Newsletter Creation

   • Compile curated and summarized content into a newsletter format
   • Use MailChimp or another platform to distribute

Step-by-Step Process

1. Scraping Reddit

• Identify target subreddits for content (e.g., Singularity, OpenAI)
• Check quality of posts: Ensure posts are relevant and mostly text-based
• Use Appify for scraping Reddit data, considering cost-effectiveness

2. Data Filtering and Storage

• Filter posts via AI based on relevancy criteria
• Store filtered posts in Google Sheets with a status indicator (new, published)

3. Summarization and Content Generation

• Use AI to generate headlines and snippets from Reddit posts
• Format content in Markdown, convert to HTML for newsletter
• Set up introduction and conclusion templates for consistency

4. Newsletter Automation

• Connect with MailChimp for newsletter distribution
• Use MailChimp API to create campaigns with dynamic content
• Schedule newsletters to run weekly using make.com and Appify

Challenges and Considerations

• Handling non-text posts (images, videos) in Reddit scraping
• Filtering out irrelevant or low-quality posts
• Ensuring AI-generated content maintains quality and coherence

Enhancements and Future Work

• Consider adding images using tools like Midjourney
• Add citation links using search engine APIs like Perplexity
• Further optimize filtering and AI prompt design

Conclusion

• System is designed to run autonomously with minimal human intervention
• Encourages feedback and viewer suggestions for future projects
• Contact and engagement requests (comments, likes, subscribe)

This set of notes covers the key points and processes involved in creating an automated AI newsletter system as presented by Nick. The focus was on utilizing technology to automate the entire workflow from data scraping to newsletter publication.