Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
Google is testing new generative AI tools in YouTube.
In a small test, AI will be used to summarize the broad topic of the comments section of certain videos.
In another test, an AI chatbot will be able to answer questions about the video being watched without interrupting playback.
YouTube continues to be the most popular online video-sharing platform, especially for long-format content. But it faces stiff competition from TikTok and Instagram, which have catapulted themselves with the rise of short-format content. Google now needs to explore ways to keep its audience coming back for more, and it seems to be turning to generative AI as the next big feature for the platform.
Google has announced that it is testing new generative AI experiments for YouTube. These include AI-generated comment summaries and a conversational AI tool.
AI summaries for comments
The primary highlight experience is an AI tool that broadly summarizes comment topics into easily digestable themes. The thought process here is to make it easier for users to participate in discussions within the comments section and to make it easier for creators to take feedback from the comment flow.
This is a small experiment that will be visible on select English videos to select users for now, especially those that have large comment sections. Users in this experiment will see a new option to sort comments by “✨Topics” on some videos. Google mentions that some YouTube Premium members will be able to opt-in to test this out at youtube.com/new.
Creators can use these comment summaries to more quickly jump into discussions. They can also remove any comment topic by individually deleting the comments that make up the comment topic. Note that comment topics are generated from published comments only.
Conversational AI tool
Further, Google is experimenting with a conversational AI tool. Using this tool, you can get answers to questions about the video you are watching, recommendations for related content, and more. What sets the tool apart from other tools like Google’s own Google Bard chatbot is that you can use the tool within YouTube without interrupting your video playback.
This AI experiment also includes a previous AI experiment within its fold, wherein users could participate in AI-generated quizzes on certain academic videos.
Users who are part of this experiment can access the conversational AI tool by tapping “✨Ask” beneath select videos. This experiment is available to a small number of people on a small subset of videos. In the coming weeks, Google will allow YouTube Premium members in the US using Android devices to join in the experiment.
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