YouTube promises custom feeds and a lot more AI later this year

The annual Made on YouTube event has just wrapped up, offering an early look at the features you can expect to come to Google’s dominant online streaming platform in the coming months. Yes, there’s plenty of AI for both viewers and creators, but there’s also a handful of non-AI updates mixed in there, too. The design of YouTube’s homepage feed comes under fire often, but the platform is preparing to give you more options. With Custom Feeds, you’ll be able to add new tabs to the YouTube interface with content of your choice. To create a feed, just type a description and let YouTube populate the page. You can refine your description and rate video suggestions to tune the Custom Feed. Google says you’ll be able to save “multiple” feeds without specifying the exact number. This feature will roll out soon in the US for web, mobile, and TV users. Interacting on YouTube will also change later this year. The platform will finally add the option to post GIFs in comments, which has apparently been a common request for some time. The comment box will let you search for popular animated thumbnails and post them on both regular videos and YouTube Shorts. The YouTube direct messaging feature is also adding support for group chat, but it’s only going to be available in the US, UK, Singapore, Brazil, and some European countries to start. YouTube also promises an AI-powered “Your Podcast Lineup” feature in the coming months. This is a weekly spoken preview of recommended podcasts available through YouTube Music. These AI features are limited to YouTube Music subscribers and will begin rolling out later this year. According to Google, YouTube creators are very invested in AI tools. The company claims that a large majority of US video posters have used AI to create or edit content in the past year. YouTube will give them even more opportunities to use AI with a new Gemini-based conversational editing feature in the YouTube Create app. After cutting together different versions of a video with AI, expanded A/B testing will let creators run up to three different versions to find the one that gets the most engagement. A new tool called Ask Studio can also help with recommendations for things like pacing, framing, and thumbnails. It will even generate those thumbnails using AI. This tool can run in the background to analyze older videos and suggest ways to boost them for more views. The content you see on YouTube may also change thanks to some new creator features. YouTube previously rolled out the option for two different creators to share a single livestream. Early next year, YouTube will use live matchmaking to merge streams from people who might not even know each other.