YouTube is giving creators a new set of AI-powered tools designed to take a lot off the work required in running a channel, from planning and editing videos to managing communities and growin
YouTube is giving creators a new set of AI-powered tools designed to take a lot off the work required in running a channel, from planning and editing videos to managing communities and growing the channel. The company unveiled the features at its Made on YouTube event in New York City, with a lot of them powered via Google’s Gemini models.
The launch was announced in a company blog post by YouTube VP Aparna Pappu, with creators increasingly turning to AI for everything from production to audience growth. For the millions of people who make a living on YouTube, the new tools could reduce how much of their work they have to handle manually.
YouTube is also adding Gemini to a conversational editing assistant for Shorts and the YouTube Create app, giving creators another way to make changes without working through the timeline manually. They can describe the edits they want, and the tool can reorder frames, trim clips, and sync music to the beat.
Creators can still switch to manual editing whenever they want and make changes directly on the timeline. YouTube said hundreds of thousands of channels used its earlier Gemini editing tools throughout August 2026.
YouTube’s first GenAI trends report found that 72% of U.S. video posters aged 14 to 44 had used AI to help create or edit content over the previous year. But some creators remain wary of the technology.
Ask Studio, YouTube’s AI assistant for creators, is also expanding beyond the desktop. After initially launching on computers, the tool is now coming to iOS and Android, giving creators access to it from their phones.
Creators will be able to submit an unpublished video and ask the AI for feedback before it goes live. The tool can review things such as pacing, structure, and storytelling, according to the company’s blog post.
Another feature, called dynamic thumbnails, lets creators upload three options and have YouTube show different versions to different groups of viewers. Pappu said creators have already run more than 40 million title and thumbnail experiments through the platform’s A/B testing feature since it launched in 2024.
YouTube is also looking to take some of the work out of managing a channel, including with an opt-in AI moderation tool that learns how each creator prefers to handle comments and adapts over time.
The company is also expanding protections against the misuse of creators’ likenesses. YouTube already uses deepfake and facial detection, and Pappu said it will begin combining speaking-voice detection with facial matching later this year. Likeness controls will also be added to the mobile app.
YouTube’s affiliate program for shopping already has more than 1.3 million creators enrolled and will expand to 35 countries by the end of the year.
Creators in India and Brazil will also be able to tag Amazon products. The company is using AI to automatically identify products in videos, giving creators another way to generate affiliate revenue.
The company is also changing how viewers can use its conversational search tool, Ask YouTube.
The feature is being expanded into a shopping assistant that can answer follow-up questions and organize product information into comparison tables. Emily Moxley, YouTube’s VP of product management for viewer AI, stated that over 140 million people used Ask YouTube in June, which equals growth of more than 500% since December last year.
Moxley said the growth is being driven by a custom Gemini model that can match complex viewer questions with the exact moments in videos where the answers appear.
YouTube is also planning more tools for live creators, including a test of real-time auto-dubbing for live videos in early 2027. Another feature, called “live showdown,” will let co-hosts compete against each other in head-to-head streams.
The company also added that microdramas gained traction on the platform, generating over 6.5 billion views in the first half of 2026, with watch time for that format of videos rising by 50% from one year earlier.
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