YouTube Prepares Custom AI Streams with Gemini

YouTube will offer recommendation streams configured in natural language and generated by the Gemini model. These streams, pinned to the homepage, are not intended to replace the main feed and can be multiple. The rollout will begin next month on both web and mobile. The announcement was made during Made On YouTube, where Emily Moxley highlighted a corpus of over 20 billion videos.

Deployment, Scope, and Coexistence with the Main Feed

The ability to create multiple personalized streams will be available starting next month on YouTube, both on the web and mobile. These new streams will not replace YouTube's main feed, which will continue to aggregate all recommendations. Users will be able to easily access these personalized streams as soon as they open the app. The streams were presented to the public during the Made On YouTube event, preceded by a briefing with journalists on a Wednesday. YouTube believes this approach will help users better explore the vast number of videos available on the platform. Emily Moxley, Vice President of Product Management for Viewer AI, notes that YouTube's corpus includes over 20 billion videos.

Creation by Prompt and Generation via Gemini

The personalized stream feature allows users to enter a natural language description in a dedicated box on YouTube. This description can pertain to a specific interest or a particular goal, such as a stream of podcast videos to watch during a 30-minute train ride, or relaxing commentary videos to unwind. Google's AI model Gemini constructs the stream based on the request, and the result is pinned at the top of the homepage in a dedicated tab. Users can elaborate on their request, indicate how to organize the stream, specify content to include or exclude, and define priorities for certain items.

A Movement Already Underway at Bluesky, Meta, X, and Spotify

Various platforms already offer tools that allow users to specify what they want to view and how the information will be presented to them. Bluesky, a decentralized social network, initiated the rollout of this method several years ago to distinguish itself from rivals like X, and launched this year Attie, an AI tool designed to simplify stream creation. Meta's Threads and Instagram, X, and more recently Spotify, have also introduced stream creation features, many of which rely on AI.