YouTube adds AI tools and updates TV app
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
YouTube is making a series of product updates, many of which incorporate AI to make content creation easier.
Why it matters: The platform is working to ensure its dominance in user-generated video content while its competitor TikTok is in peril and its parent company faces larger issues in court.
Zoom in: YouTube announced the updates on Wednesday at Made On YouTube, an event in New York featuring demos and remarks from executives and creators. AI-focused highlights included:
- Veo, Google's AI video model, is being integrated into YouTube Shorts, allowing creators to generate video backgrounds and six-second clips.
- Automatic dubbing soon will be available to more creators, translating videos into Spanish, French and other languages.
- The Inspiration Tab, the so-called "brainstorming buddy" in YouTube Studio, now suggests titles, thumbnails and outlines with Google Gemini.
- Google's AI will offer reply suggestions for viewer comments in the new Community tab in YouTube Studios.
What they're saying: "A lot of these tools bring efficiency to the creators so they can focus their energy on obviously what they do best, which is creation and the ideas," YouTube vice president Amjad Hanif tells Axios.
Follow the money: For YouTube's TV app, creators can now organize videos into seasons and links are more easily clickable.
- The investments comes as YouTube has ranked No. 1 on Nielsen's Media Distributor Gauge report for the past 16 consecutive months. It accounted for 10.6% of TV viewing in July.
- The company also announced that the number of YouTube creators making the majority of their YouTube revenue via TV screens is up more than 30% from the prior year.
- Also for creator monetization, YouTube is adding digital gifting, which will first be available on vertical livestreams in the U.S. It also is expanding YouTube Shopping to more countries.
What we're watching: Some of YouTube's new features compete with existing startups. Captions, which closed a $60 million Series C this year, offers video dubbing. Veo competes OpenAI's Sora, Runway and other AI video models.
