Google is testing AI chatbot search for YouTube

Google is trying out an AI Mode-like search experience for YouTube. The company is now testing “a new way to search on YouTube that feels more like a conversation,” with results pulling in things like longform videos, YouTube Shorts, and text about what you’re searching for. The “experiment” is now available if you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber in the US who is 18 or older.

I turned it on for my account. Now, in the search bar, I see an “Ask YouTube” button, and clicking the search bar shows prompts to ask like “funny baby elephant playing clips,” “summary of the rules of volleyball,” and “short history of the Apollo 11 moon landing.” If I keep the search box blank but click the Ask YouTube button, YouTube takes me to a full page with suggested searches and a text box to ask a question.

When you search with Ask YouTube, YouTube briefly shows a mostly-blank page with a loading icon, and after a few seconds, fills it out with text and details. I tested it with the “short history of the Apollo 11 moon landing” prompt. At the top of the results was a bunch of text summarizing the mission, including a bulleted list of milestones like the date of the lunar landing and Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon. Then, the page included a video about the launch timestamped to a section about the launch day from a channel called “The Life Guide,” followed by galleries of videos under headers like “From Launch to Splashdown,” “Historic Footage and Behind-the-Scenes,” and a series of Shorts about “Moments on the Surface.” (I assume YouTube is pulling the text for these sections from the videos highlighted in the search results.)

At the end, the page has a few more suggested prompts, including “Who were the Apollo 11 astronauts” and (perhaps worryingly) “Apollo 11 conspiracy theories,” and a text box I can use to ask a follow-up question or start a new search. I clicked the “Who were the Apollo 11 astronauts” and got a new, slightly differently-formatted set of results, including a grid with background about astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Searching for “Apollo 11 conspiracy theories” just showed a typical list of YouTube search results, however.

I threw Ask YouTube another test to see how it fared with something I’m very familiar with: Valve’s new Steam Controller, which I published a review of today. I asked, “What is the Steam Controller,” and YouTube gave an overview of the controller, pointed to Valve’s new video about the controller, and highlighted both longform reviews and a “Quick Hands-On Reviews” section featuring Shorts (including our new Short published today and one from last November).

It was all mostly right, but I did catch a factual flub: YouTube claimed that the old, discontinued Steam Controller had no joysticks, when it actually has one. It was a reminder that, as potentially useful as these AI-created search result pages might seem, you need to do your due diligence to make sure they’re accurate.

YouTube says it’s already “working on” expanding this experiment to users who don’t have Premium. Just as it’s continued to iterate on AI Mode and brought AI Mode to Gmail, it seems likely that “Ask YouTube” is something Google sees a big future for.