YouTube’s creator broadcast “Made On YouTube” is back and there’s no shortage of buzz. From further integration of AI to community, YouTube seems to be gearing up to take on rivals like TikTok and Netflix. Among the mountain of updates and new features, here are five that really caught our attention.
YouTube is introducing a Hype system that will allow viewers to do more than just like and share videos. The goal is to give fans more exposure to smaller creators. That’s why Hype will only be allowed on videos from creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers, and on videos that are less than a week old. The most hyped content will be featured in a new ranking of the 100 most hyped videos in the country. Fans can only Hype three times a week for now, but more usage will be available for purchase in the future.
YouTube Shorts creators will have access to Google DeepMind’s Veo video generator model later this year. Veo can generate six-second clips after loading a prompt. All productions will be labeled with a SynthID watermark to indicate that generative AI was used. The Veo integration will work alongside (but not replace) Dream Screen, another AI video generation tool from YouTube introduced last year.
The Community tab will be revamped and is expected to be released in early 2025. Currently, only channel owners can post in the Community tab, but the new experience will allow subscribers to create posts and will have a tab that only shows creators’ posts if desired. Subscribers will of course be able to post images to encourage conversation. Some creators currently engage with their audiences through other platforms (such as Discord) and this appears to be an attempt to create an alternative in-house.
While some lament that they can’t understand creators who speak a language they don’t speak, YouTube is trying to solve this problem by implementing auto-dubbing. With the help of AI, viewers can listen to machine-translated audio in their preferred language. YouTube promises that the audio will sound natural, taking into account the creator’s surroundings and intonation.
Finally, the YouTube TV app will be updated to mirror Netflix’s current layout. Creators will be able to organize their content by seasons and episodes, and users will see a preview before playing the content. According to The Hollywood Reporter, these new features are expected to be available starting next year, but no specific date has been announced.
