YouTube has announced a bunch of new tools for creators, covering pretty much every stage of making a video. The updates were revealed at the company's Made on YouTube event on Wednesday and include new features for YouTube Studio, Shorts and the YouTube Create app.
The platform is also making changes to Ask YouTube, adding shopping features to the conversational search tool. Shorts creators, meanwhile, are getting a new way to turn multiple videos into a series.
YouTube Studio Can Now Help With Video Ideas
Some of the biggest changes are coming to YouTube Studio. The platform is adding dedicated Insights and Research sections that can help creators look back at their videos and find patterns in what has worked.
The tools can also flag videos that performed unusually well compared with the rest of a channel. That gives creators another way to spot topics or formats that could be worth revisiting.
Creators will also be able to get feedback on videos before publishing them. YouTube Studio can look at a draft and provide suggestions related to pacing, structure and storytelling.
Thumbnails are getting some attention too. Creators can generate thumbnails that fit the look of their existing channel, while dynamic thumbnails can show different versions to different groups of viewers.
YouTube says creators have run more than 40 million title and thumbnail A/B tests since the feature launched in 2024. The company is now extending that idea to the video itself. A new test will allow up to three different cuts of a video to be compared, helping creators see which opening gets the better response.
Ask Studio is also being updated. It can work in the background, go through older videos and suggest new thumbnails for them.
Gemini Comes To Shorts Editing
YouTube is putting Gemini into a conversational editing assistant for Shorts and the YouTube Create app.
Creators can tell the assistant what they want to change instead of doing everything manually. It can help reorder clips, trim footage and sync music, after which the creator can jump back into the regular timeline and continue editing themselves.
Comment moderation is getting an AI option as well. YouTube is testing an opt-in system that learns how an individual creator normally moderates comments and uses that approach when helping manage new comments.
There is another update aimed at protecting creators from impersonation. YouTube is expanding its likeness detection tools and plans to bring speaking voice detection together with facial detection later this year.
Ask YouTube Gets A Shopping Upgrade
Ask YouTube is moving beyond questions about videos. The feature is being expanded into a shopping companion that can help users research products.
For product searches, it can organise recommendations and create comparison tables based on a user's preferences. Viewers can also ask follow-up questions directly while watching a video.
Shorts Are Getting A Series Format
YouTube is also changing the way creators can package Shorts. A new Shorts series feature will let them arrange videos into seasons and episodes.
That should make it easier to follow a story across multiple Shorts instead of having each clip sit separately in the normal Shorts feed. Series will appear on the creator's channel and can have their own custom thumbnails.
The format will also work across YouTube's web, mobile and connected TV platforms.
With these changes, YouTube is pushing more creator work into its own tools, from researching the next idea and testing a video to editing clips, handling comments and organising Shorts into a series.