YouTube tests AI-powered search summaries for Premium users

YouTube is bringing an AI Overviews-style feature to its platform, showing AI-powered search result carousels for YouTube Premium members in the US when they search for shopping, travel, or location-based content. The experimental feature represents Google’s continued expansion of AI search capabilities across its product ecosystem, potentially changing how users discover and consume video content.

What you should know: The AI-powered search results carousel displays a prominent video clip at the top, thumbnail previews of related videos below, and an AI-generated text summary responding to the user’s query.

• Users can tap the main video clip to watch the full content, creating a streamlined discovery experience.
• The feature is currently limited to iOS and Android devices and only works with English-language videos.
• Only a “randomly selected number of Premium members” have access to the experimental tool, which will be tested until July 30th.

The big picture: Google is systematically rolling out AI Overview-style features across its major platforms, following the controversial introduction of AI Overviews in Google Search earlier this year.

• The move signals Google’s commitment to integrating generative AI into content discovery, despite mixed user reactions to similar features on other platforms.
• By limiting the initial rollout to Premium subscribers, YouTube is taking a more cautious approach than Google’s broader AI Overviews deployment.

Additional developments: YouTube is also expanding access to its conversational AI tool that allows users to ask questions about specific videos.

• The feature, originally launched in 2023, was previously exclusive to Premium members but is now being extended to “some non-Premium users in the US.”
• This expansion suggests YouTube is gradually democratizing its AI-powered video interaction features beyond its paid subscriber base.

Why this matters: The integration of AI-generated summaries into YouTube search could fundamentally alter how the platform’s 2.7 billion users discover and engage with video content.

• For creators, AI summaries may influence which videos get featured in search results and how their content is presented to potential viewers.
• The feature could also impact YouTube’s advertising model if users rely more heavily on AI summaries rather than clicking through to watch full videos.