YouTube's Usage of Generative AI

This article is about YouTube features using Generative AI. For channels that use AI to farm engagement, please see Content Farms#AI Content Farms.

This article is a compilation of AI tools and features offered by YouTube, present and historical. Note that most features listed here are experimental, meaning they may not be available globally, or for non-Premium users.
On YouTube, anything that uses AI is marked with a star symbol (✦).

Functionality

AI Verification

In August 2025, YouTube introduced a new verification rule for users of the platform. The AI model, is designed to analyze an account's watch history, age in order to determine whether they are over 18, replacing their previous dependency on given birthdates. If a user is suspected to be under 18, they must upload an ID or provide a photo to prove they are of age. If they do not, their account will be subject to restrictions.

Tools

Inspirations

Inspirations are a tab within YouTube Studio that allows creators to generate a list of five suggestions with ai-generated ideas, thumbnails, and descriptions. Creators can also save the suggestions for later, rate them, or expand upon them with the AI. The Inspirations tab uses data from the user's own channel to generate. This includes channel reception and content. Currently, this is only available in YouTube Studio on Desktop.

Auto-dubbing

Auto-dubbing generates audio that translates the content's speech to and from English. Auto-dubs are enabled by default for channels signed up for Early-Access.

Posts

Channels can post generated images, or enhance post text using AI.

Features

Summary

AI summaries appear under a video's viewcount. The text is generated by AI from the transcript and description. Viewers can like or dislike the summary in order to give feedback on accuracy.

Live Chat Summary

AI chat summaries are only available for livestreams, and communicate a general idea of what the people in the Live Chat are saying. Only appears on some streams. It can be turned off via the Live Control Room by the host.

Topics

The "Topics" tab appears in YouTube comment sections. It is a special filter that attempts to display comments in groups, with the groups' titles expressing the views of the contents within.

Ask

The Ask button is a feature where the user can ask Gemini a premade question about the video they're watching, or type their own question. These only appear under select academic English videos to adult accounts.

Ask Music

Ask Music is a feature on YouTube Music that allows users to create playlists with AI via a single-sentence prompt, the process being much like Spotify's AI-generated playlists.

Learning

In the US, @Learning offers an Ask feature to find videos related to a question. For example, searching "How do cats purr" will give videos about how cats purr in dropdown boxes, much like a traditional Google search. Another tab on the page, "Test Your Knowledge", allows users to take a quiz of their knowledge based on the videos included in the AI response.

AI carousels

On mobile with YouTube Premium, users are given a video slideshow and search summary, similar to Google's AI Overview. Each video in the carousel has a unique summary. Viewers can click on a video to go to that specific one.

AI Playground

AI Playground is the name of the window that aggregates all AI tools for Shorts. It can be entered by tapping the star icon on the top right of the editor.

Dream Screen

Dream screen is an Effect on YouTube Shorts that allows someone to remove their current video background, then prompt an AI to generate a background for them. The effect can also adjust the subject and foreground; e.g. by adding a glittery texture over the subject's face.

Veo Effects

A series of YouTube Short effects, powered by Google's Gemini Veo, that generate short videos from an image. There are only a few effects so far that utilize this; such as Sibling, which creates a duplicate of the person in frame, and Trophy, which shows the subject's arm holding a trophy, with them celebrating.

Dream Track

Dream Track is a tool for YouTube Shorts that enables the uploader to generate a song for use in their video. Users can prompt the AI via text and genre, then use one of four generated tracks the tool creates.

Dream drawing effects

These are a series of effects that allow the user to generate a picture from a simple drawing. The generation will try and morph the drawing into the effect's subject, even if it's a living being to an object and vice versa. All the current effects within this are Dream Cat, Dream Dog, Dream Fruit, Dream Dragon, Dream Trinket, Dream Unicorn, Dream Dessert, Dream Plushie, Dream Butterfly, and Dream Bird.

Photo to Video

Photo to Video is the current name of a feature where users input photos, get a list of suggested prompts, then generate video via the photo and suggestion. Photo to Video uses Gemini's Veo. It was announced on the YouTube Creators channel on 12 August 2025.

AI Stickers

This is a feature that allows you to generate AI stickers through typing a prompt. The results can be re-rolled.

AI Editing

Editing with AI is a tool available on YouTube Shorts that generates a short video out of raw footage provided by the user. The announcement video states it finds the most engaging clips from the video(s) provided and edits them into a compelling "story". The feature can edit from up to 25 videos with a combined runtime of 3 minutes. The editor also has "styles" the user can choose from, which determine how the video is edited by the AI.

Controversy

Developing information!

This article contains information that is frequently changing and relates to a currently developing situation.

Certain information may be outdated and we ask that all important information is accompanied by citations.

Upscaling on Shorts

In August 2025, channels that recently uploaded YouTube Shorts noticed that their uploaded content looked different; particularly, an increase in contrast, blurry details, and extremely sharp lines. Creators remarked that it looked similar to AI upscaling, and contacted YouTube about running such an experiment without consent from them.

The YouTube Creator's liaison denied that the company was using AI or any upscaling, instead attributing it to "traditional machine learning". The feedback to this response has been mostly negative, saying that this does not matter, as it still creates the impression that the channels involved are using AI themselves.

Gallery

Example of comment topics.

Example of a thumbnail generated by the "Inspiration" tool.

An example of an AI summary given to a video.

An example of the dream cat generative effect.