Google and AI: A Threat to YouTube Creators' Revenue

Google Unveils Ask YouTube, a Controversial AI Tool

During a briefing ahead of the Google I/O 2026 event, Google executives introduced a series of AI-powered features aimed at addressing various issues within their software ecosystem. Among these innovations, Ask YouTube stands out for its ability to enhance the quality of video searches. This tool scans the entire catalog of long videos and Shorts on YouTube to highlight relevant content in response to complex queries. At first glance, this seems like a positive advancement for users and creators on the platform.

However, Ask YouTube goes further by directing users to a video that answers their question, focusing on the relevant timestamp. This approach allows users to quickly get their answer and leave the video. Yet, if viewers do not stay to watch the entirety or most of the video, it directly threatens the means by which video creators earn a living and build their community. YouTubers rely on a large subscriber base, which leads to increased advertising revenue, sponsorships, affiliate links, and fan funding. In other words, Google's quest for convenience could deprive creators of essential funds to sustain its platform.

Impact of AI Features on Creators

Google has already made a similar move with the introduction of AI Overviews in late 2024. These AI summaries place information at the top of search results, above publishers who relied on traffic generated by those pages. By extracting information from media sites and summarizing it, AI Overviews reduced clicks to other websites by 58%, according to a February report from marketing and research firm Ahrefs.

During the opening speech of Google I/O 2025, Google CEO Sundar Pichai boasted that AI Overviews had over 1.5 billion monthly users. A year later, at Google I/O 2026, Pichai noted in a blog post that this feature had reached over 2.5 billion monthly users. The cannibalization of referral traffic by generative AI Overviews seems to be a predictive model for video platforms. The Ask YouTube feature, as described, directs you to the point in a video that answers your question, after which you are likely to have little or no incentive to stay. Viewers may not perceive the subject and vibe of the channel, nor will they continue watching to engage with its charm or storytelling.

Google's "solution" involves surgically extracting content from creators to direct YouTube viewers to answers. Essentially, this could replace YouTubers' revenue sources by exploiting their data and expertise, thereby compromising their entire business model. Ask YouTube is initially intended for YouTube Premium subscribers, but the company plans to roll it out across the platform at some point.

New AI Features and Their Implications

Google introduced numerous AI features during its opening speech, but some are more subtle in their efforts to replace creators' revenue sources. Search has a few integrations with intriguing capabilities, including the use of the Gemini 3.5 Flash agent's abilities to code simple and quick software on the fly. For example, from a basic request, it can build a wedding or travel planning widget that displays relevant information and timelines directly in the browser window.

However, what is referred to as coding agentic has another use case that Google demonstrated during the briefing. Suppose you ask a question about a specific part of astrophysics, like black holes — to respond, Gemini 3.5 Flash could create an interactive visual simulation to demonstrate how a complex concept works. Google calls this "generative UI."

I hope that most people seeking to understand black holes would turn to a reputable publication with quality journalism on space and science. But realistically, I expect many people will go to YouTube to see a complex astrophysics concept visually broken down in a well-produced video. Why would they bother if Gemini 3.5 Flash generates a simulation directly from the search results?

There is a lot of uncertainty, particularly around the quality and accuracy of the simulated responses generated by the new Gemini model. Yet, even if they are sometimes inaccurate, convenience seems to outweigh their reliability. Despite AI Overviews telling people to eat stones in 2024 and providing other erroneous information, people continue to use them instead of scrolling past. The AI startup Oumi, cited by the New York Times, estimated that AI Overviews using the new Gemini 3 model were accurate 91% of the time. Several health organizations and charities told the Guardian that AI Overviews had given inaccurate suggestions for searches on pancreatic cancer, liver diseases, and other serious health issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if the explosion of new AI features in search leads to fewer people seeking answers in videos. Search cannot replace streamers (for now), but an entire category of YouTube content — explanations, tutorials, and demonstrations — could see a drop in traffic if viewers do not venture beyond their AI-generated search results. And they will miss out on all those curious, quirky, and exciting video creators who want to share with the world.

As AI Overviews reduce clicks outside of Google's ecosystem, YouTube's conversational AI and Google's generative search simulations threaten to diminish video content production. And this creates a paradox: if creators stop producing informative content due to a lack of traffic and compensation, the AI models will not have the datasets they need to generate future responses. Ultimately, Google is building its "convenience" empire on the backs of unpaid creators.