YouTube Premium subscribers may soon get some assistance from an artificial intelligence system that will make it easier to read through comments and find new videos.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, said on Monday that it would roll out two generative AI features to select Premium subscribers. The first is a system that will summarize and organize comments by topics. The second a conversational AI tool that will answer your questions on what the video is about and refer you to other related content. It will run under the video (when it’s played in horizontal mode) so it won’t disturb the viewing experience.
These tools are just the latest example of how generative AI systems are being employed to augment and change your experience of various services. AI has exploded over the last year, with ChatGPT showing the public how a generative AI system can do everything from generating code to writing your book report for you. It’s led to questions about the risks and ethical concerns these systems open up, but that hasn’t stopped virtually every company from employing AI in some way.
YouTube stressed that these features were limited experiments, and that not all users will be able to see them.
On the comment feature, YouTube mentioned that creators can use the summaries to more quickly jump into comment discussions on their videos, or inspire them to create follow-up videos. The experiment is running on a small number of English-language videos that have larger comment sections.
The conversational tool is likewise available to just select users who will see this icon ✨. It’s available today to select users on a small subset of videos. In the coming weeks, it will be available to YouTube Premium members in the U.S. on Android devices. You can join here.