New YouTube features: AI, Hype, and YouTube Shopping

If video is a part of your marketing strategy (and it should be), the latest updates to YouTube need to be on your radar.

Some new features come as no surprise (more generative AI, yawn), but others, like ‘Hype’ and YouTube Shopping are more significant changes that brands and creators can leverage to raise awareness and generate revenue.

New AI features

Shocker, it’s more generative AI, because big tech players are obsessed with shoehorning it into every product they own, whether it’s needed or not.

In this case, Dream Screen, which can generate backgrounds in YouTube Shorts, has been given an upgrade with Veo, Google’s latest video generation model.

In YouTube Studio, the Inspiration tab will introduce AI to help creators brainstorm new video ideas, and suggest titles, thumbnail images and outlines.

Auto dubbing, another AI feature which was tested with a small group of creators last year, will also become more widely available. This could be a great tool for creators and brands with limited resources to translate their videos into multiple languages.

Communities

Communities offer a space for creators and brands alike to engage with their audience on a more personal level, with the ability to post images, videos, polls, and quizzes.

Now, fans can interact with the creator Communities they are a part of, starting conversations and sharing their own experiences. As a result, there are potential issues with the moderation of Communities, and so creators will have the option to disable this feature.

There is no minimum number of subscribers a channel needs to create a community, but the new and improved Communities are currently only available to a small number of creators (and their fans) on mobile, with access being expanded in 2025.

As well as expanding the features of Communities, in the YouTube Studio app, the Community Hub has also had an upgrade. Surprise, surprise; one of the new features is ‘AI-enhanced comment reply suggestions’.

Hype

For smaller creators (channels with between 500 and 500,000 subscribers), YouTube is introducing ‘Hype’ – which gives viewers the opportunity to boost their visibility by featuring their content in a weekly leaderboard. If a viewer likes a video, after actually ‘liking’ it with the usual thumbs up, they can then ‘hype’ it. The Hype feature will appear under the Explore tab.

There are a few caveats – the video must have been uploaded in the past 7 days, and be long-form (though YouTube doesn’t indicate how long it needs to be).

While the Hype feature is likely to be dominated by creators, it can be a useful indicator of emerging trends for brands. Additionally, brands who want to work with up-and-coming influencers should take note, as these creators could make good partners and be more open to commercial opportunities as their fan base grows.

YouTube Shopping

Google has clearly been paying attention to the rapid rise of social commerce, with TikTok Shop attracting millions of consumers – particularly Gen Z.

YouTube Shopping is already available to 250,000 creators in the U.S. and South Korea, and will soon be rolling out to new markets.

For more information on all of the recent updates, the full announcement can be found here.