YouTube Might Let You Customize Your Home Page By Talking With An AI Chatbot

The Home page feed can be one of the best or worst things about YouTube. It depends on how good Google's algorithms are able to interpret your YouTube activity and offer content that you might like to watch when you load the website or app. You're not always going to click what you see in that feed, and nobody would blame you if you simply ignored the Home page and visited your favorite channels or searched for specific clips on the massive streaming platform. Google is aware of the YouTube algorithm issues, and it's testing a new way to customize the home feed that, unsurprisingly, includes talking to an AI chatbot.

Discovered by Android Authority, the new YouTube "Your Custom Feed" test will let users talk to an unspecified AI in natural language about their interests. That might be great news to any YouTube user who is already conversing with AI chatbots elsewhere, whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, or a different AI chatbot. The ability to use natural language to get results, whether it's shopping in ChatGPT or navigating in Google Maps, is something more apps should support. Also, since Google is integrating its Gemini features into more apps, adding AI chatbot functionality to YouTube seems like the next logical step for the streaming service. After all, Gemini can already help you find content on your Google TV.

As exciting as the feature might sound, you can't enable it manually in your YouTube account. Google explained in a YouTube support document that the "Your Custom Feed" button will appear on your Home page as a chip besides "Home," if you're part of the experiment. "When you click into it, you can update your existing Home feed recommendations by entering a simple prompt," the document reads. "This feature is designed to give you an easy-to-use way to have more control over your suggested content."

Google did not share images to showcase the functionality, and it's unclear whether it'll be available both on mobile and the web. Also, it's unclear whether YouTube users who are included in the test will be able to have conversations inside YouTube about the content they want to watch. That is, it's unclear if YouTube will support follow-up prompts to the initial natural-language search. Finally, it's unclear what AI model Google is using to power the custom feed experiment on YouTube. It may be based on a Gemini model, which is the branding Google uses for all its chatbots.

While Google is adding as many Gemini AI features to its non-AI apps as it can, there are no guarantees that the YouTube AI chatbot experiment will yield the desired results. Not all YouTube users might be fans of products like ChatGPT and Gemini. They may be more reticent about talking to an AI on YouTube, especially if they haven't interacted with a chatbot elsewhere.