YouTube is testing an AI-powered search feature called 'Ask YouTube'

YouTube is apparently working to integrate more AI features into its user interface. Shortly after increasing the price of YouTube Premium, they launched AI avatars for Shorts creators and began asking users whether they felt their feeds were filled with "AI slop". However, presumably after getting the answer that we weren't getting enough AI on our feeds, they are reportedly doubling down on AI features.

A new AI-powered search feature called "Ask YouTube" is reportedly in the works. Users will now get a tool in the search bar that uses AI to find the perfect answers to their queries, integrating videos into the answers. If you searched for a "how-to" style video, you might get a step-by-step instructional answer with multiple videos curated by AI to best answer your question.

In the demo, a user asks YouTube to "plan a 3-day road trip from San Francisco to Santa Barbara". The feature then proceeds to do its "AI magic" and provides a result with a mix of text, short videos, and long-form videos that are tailored to the user's specific query. This might seem like a red flag for discoverability, but YouTube claims it will show videos and relevant segments, along with channel details, to point users to the sources. You can then ask follow-up questions to the original query and get more video suggestions, much like the conversations we are now used to holding with large language models.

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The feature seems useful at first glance, but it has its fair share of issues once you pull back the curtain a bit. For one, this would impact organic search discoverability and may favor one channel over the other, as the results are being determined by AI. Moreover, it is bound to have accuracy issues, as confirmed by The Verge's test, where the AI was convinced that the Steam Controller did not have a joystick, when indeed it does.

The "Ask YouTube" feature is currently in testing and is only available to YouTube Premium subscribers in the United States who are over the age of 18. It is also an opt-in service, at least right now. Google is working to make this feature available to non-Premium users, but there is currently no timeline for when that might happen.