Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Infodemiology
Date Submitted: Jun 10, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 23, 2025 - Aug 18, 2025
Date Accepted: Dec 23, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Maria Ciência: Application of Artificial Intelligence for Audience-Specific Health Communication and Knowledge Dissemination
ABSTRACT
Background:
Scientific misinformation remains a major barrier to effective health communication. Bridging the gap between academic research and public understanding requires tools that simplify scientific language and adapt content to diverse audiences.
Objective:
This study presents Maria Ciência, a specialized GPT-based assistant for science communication. The tool supports researchers in translating peer-reviewed scientific findings through simple prompts into accessible, ethically appropriate materials tailored for children, the general public, health professionals, and policymakers.
Methods:
The tool was configured using prompt engineering techniques and guided by curated reference materials on inclusive and non-stigmatizing scientific language. Materials derived from 47 public health articles resulted in 188 outputs, which were assessed by 121 evaluators using four criteria: clarity, level of detail, language suitability, and content quality.
Results:
Globally, mean scores were high: clarity (4.90), language suitability (4.78), content quality (4.72), and level of detail (4.56), on a 5-point scale. Materials for children and the general public consistently achieved the highest ratings across all criteria.
Conclusions:
A targeted comparison with the base large language model (ChatGPT 4o) demonstrated superior performance of Maria Ciência in contextual stability. Maria Ciência demonstrates the potential of AI-assisted tools to enhance knowledge translation and counter scientific misinformation by producing scalable, audience-specific content.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.