If you’ve searched on Google recently, you’ve undoubtedly come across the Artificial Intelligence Overview in search results. This tool, powered by Google Gemini, tries to save you a few clicks by combining information from links that appear in the search results and providing what it thinks is the information you’re looking for in a concise manner. However, the accuracy of these reviews often leaves much to be desired, and the tool itself has been plagued by hallucinations (with varying degrees of hilarity) since its launch.
Google is now bringing this tool to YouTube, testing a video version of AI-powered reviews for a small number of YouTube Premium users in the US for a limited number of English-language searches. While Google’s search results show text summaries generated by LLMs, AI reviews on YouTube will function as a kind of commercial for certain videos.
In a post on the YouTube community forum, Google said: “This new feature will use artificial intelligence to highlight snippets from videos that are most relevant to your search query… This will most likely show up when you’re looking for more information about products you’re buying (e.g., “best noise-canceling headphones”), or when you’re looking for more information about places or things to do in those places (e.g., “museums to visit in San Francisco”).”
This raises some questions about the revenue model for creators on YouTube and how AI-generated videos will affect their income. The main concern with AI-powered reviews in search is Google’s own summary, which absorbs traffic that would otherwise go to the posts shown in search results. Bringing these tools to YouTube is likely to raise similar concerns for video content creators.
Google will collect feedback on these reviews from premium users, who can vote by raising or lowering their thumbs up or down for videos created by artificial intelligence. Google did not say how long this pilot project will last, or whether Google plans to expand AI reviews on YouTube to all but premium subscribers.
