YouTube Introduces AI Search Results For Premium Members

Google is introducing AI-generated search results to YouTube as part of its larger initiative to transform the conventional search experience for users by incorporating generative AI throughout its whole ecosystem.

AI-generated search results on the video-sharing platform will appear at the top of the results page. There will be multiple YouTube videos along with an AI-generated summary for each video. Users can click on the video thumbnails to start playing them directly from the search results. The AI-generated summary that accompanies each video will contain information that is most relevant to the user’s search query.

However, AI-powered search experience on the platform is currently limited to YouTube Premium subscribers. It is an optional feature, which means Premium subscribers will have to manually enable the feature by visiting YouTube’s experimental page.

This move shows that Google is leaning into generative AI for search and discovery, with AI-generated summaries taking the place of regular links. Just like the AI Overviews in Google Search, this feature is meant to show up above the organic search results, fitting into the big tech company’s plan to get more users interacting with its AI systems.

“In the coming days, our conversational AI tool will also be available to some non-Premium users in the U.S. Premium members are already loving it for getting more insights, recommendations, and even testing themselves on key concepts in academic videos”, YouTube said in a blog post published June 26.

How is this going to affect the user experience on YouTube?

Currently, only YouTube Premium subscribers can opt-in to seeing AI-generated search results on the platform, but Google is likely to expand access to all users in the future. By showing AI-generated video summaries, YouTube users may be less motivated to open and watch videos on the platform.

This feature could also impact engagement, as fewer users may comment, subscribe, and generally interact with content creators.

A similar trend is already unfolding in web search. Numerous studies indicate that more and more people are turning to chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini to ask questions for information, rather than using web browsers like Safari. This shift from conventional search engines to generative AI poses challenges, particularly for publishers and websites that depend on search traffic for their revenue.

The AI-generated summary in YouTube search results is likely to provide them with an overview of all the key parts of the video. This might make it tougher for YouTube channels to expand and generate revenue. Additionally, according to CEO Neal Mohan.

The AI model, which can create cinema-quality images with full sound and dialogue, was apparently trained on subsets of the 20 billion video library uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube is set to introduce its Veo 3 AI video generation model to YouTube Shorts in the upcoming months.