YouTube is experimenting with a new AI feature that could change how people find videos. Here’s the kicker: not everyone is going to love it.
The platform has started rolling out AI-generated video summaries directly in search results, but only for a limited group of YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. For now, the AI Overviews are focused on things like product recommendations and travel ideas. They’re meant to give quick highlights from multiple videos without making users look at each item they’re interested in.
Instead, YouTube users will get a carousel of bite-sized previews pulled from different creators. For example, searching for the best wireless headphones or top spots to visit in Japan might now serve up AI-generated clips that pull some of the key moments tof each video together into a neat package.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it mirrors the AI Overviews that Google has been rolling out across Search. That broader push has already hit more than a billion users, but it’s also been controversial. Google’s AI summaries have made headlines for mistakes, strange advice, and valid concerns about steering traffic away from the original sources. YouTube creators are already raising similar red flags, worried that AI summaries could hurt their views and engagement overall.
YouTube says this is just an experiment and is actively collecting feedback through thumbs up and thumbs down ratings. Depending on how users react, the company could decide to roll it out more widely or pull it back for more fine-tuning. It’s unclear whether this is going to be a non-negotiable addition to YouTube’s list of perks, but at the very least it seems poised to become one of the platform’s biggest pushes for the moment with its focus on AI-generated features.
There doesn’t appear to be a set date for when users beyond YouTube Premium could have access to the overviews that are still in the works.
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