Google is expanding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology across its products and services. Amid the reports which claim that the tech giant is bringing generative capabilities to Assistant, its streaming platform YouTube has announced that it is testing AI auto-generated summaries.

The AI technology will automatically generate summaries of YouTube videos offering a quick overview of what it is about.

These summaries will not replace video descriptions that are written by content creators. With these auto-generated summaries on YouTube, users will be able to decide whether the video is the right fit for them. Users will see these summaries on watch and search pages.
“This experiment is running only with a limited number of videos (en only) and viewers, so if you see the feature, let us know what you think by sending feedback!” YouTube said on a support page.

AI in YouTube Shorts
This is not the first time that AI is being used on YouTube. In May Google DeepMind — the combine of DeepMind and Brain AI teams — shared details about one of its visual language models (VLM). It said that the VLM, called Flamingo, is being used to generate descriptions for YouTube Shorts.
“Shorts are created in just a few minutes and often don’t include descriptions and helpful titles, which makes them harder to find through search. So we introduced our visual language model Flamingo to help generate descriptions,” Google DeepMind wrote in the post.
Flamingo can make descriptions by analysing the initial frames of a video to explain what’s going on and generating descriptions for all new shorts. The description is stored as metadata in YouTube which makes the discoverability of shorts better. This means that users will be able to quickly search for shorts on YouTube.

Generative AI on Google Play Store
Earlier this year, Google made generative AI tools available to Play Store developers in an attempt to make it easier for them to build out their app listings. It also started as an experimental feature which was designed to reduce the effort it takes to draft a listing in the app store. Moreover, the company is also bringing AI to its other products like Workspace apps.