YouTube is going all-in on AI, from your homepage to the editing timeline.
At its Made on YouTube event this week, the company rolled out a wave of AI tools built on Google's Gemini models. A new Custom Feeds feature lets viewers type a prompt (say, tuxedoed cats playing jazz piano) and get a live-updating feed tab, arriving on desktop and mobile before the end of 2026. The Ask YouTube chatbot can now parse a video's actual content, return time-stamped answers, and even surface product links for viewers to buy directly. On the creator side, a new Ask Studio tool lets people edit full videos through conversational prompts, handling first drafts, typography, music, and thumbnails.
YouTube says it supported over 500,000 full-time jobs and added $60 billion to US GDP in 2025, numbers it's using to argue AI helps creators rather than replaces them. YouTube exec Aparna Pappu put it more directly: 'we only succeed when creators succeed.' That claim gets tested by the new Ask YouTube shopping flow, which lets viewers buy a product straight from a chatbot answer and can leave the creator who originally reviewed it without affiliate credit unless the viewer clicks back to the source video.
Executives frame this as a collaborative process where creators stay in charge; it's also, not coincidentally, a lot of new real estate for Gemini inside a platform Google already owns end to end.