YouTube’s New Search Feature Will Remind You of Google’s AI Overviews

YouTube is adding a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature to its platform. On Thursday, the video streaming giant announced Search Results Carousel, which will show up when users search certain keywords. The new carousel will feature suggested videos in a new layout as well as a text description of the videos to help users learn more about them before beginning to watch them. The new feature will currently be exclusive to YouTube Premium subscriptions in the US. Additionally, the Google-owned platform is also expanding the conversational AI tool to some non-Premium users.

YouTube Brings a New AI-Powered Video Carousel

In a blog post, YouTube introduced the new AI feature. The company began testing the Search Results Carousel in April and made it available to a small subset of Premium users. It is now expanding it to a wider base of Premium users in the US.

The new AI carousel on YouTube
Photo Credit: YouTube

The AI feature shows a new carousel for certain keywords when users search for shopping, travel, or things to do at a specific place. The results page will show a new layout with a large video clip at the top, followed by thumbnails of other suggested videos underneath. YouTube is also adding an AI-generated text about the query. To watch a video, users can tap on the large video clip at the top, and to see another video, they can tap on the smaller thumbnails.

Currently, the feature is only available on Android and iOS for videos in the English language. According to the YouTube experiments page, this trial period will last till July 30. The company might expand the feature to other regions after that.

Apart from this, YouTube is also expanding its conversational AI tool to some non-Premium users in the US. The feature is denoted by a sparkle icon underneath the video in the same row as Like, Share, and Download buttons. It allows users to ask questions about the video and even ask for recommendations. The chatbot is powered by Gemini. It was first introduced in April 2024 and was only available to Premium users. Notably, the feature is only available on Android devices.