The Best New Features Coming to YouTube in 2024

At its annual event held in New York yesterday, YouTube announced a bunch of features it’s introducing on its platform in 2024. Several of these features are powered by Google’s DeepMind AI tech and are more focused on creators than viewers.

In addition to liking videos on YouTube, you can “Hype” them, too. Hype is a soon-to-be-launched feature that will live next to the Like button and push the video to a weekly leaderboard each time it’s pressed. Sometimes, I come across a small creator I like and want to introduce to others, but sharing feels like a lot of effort, and liking doesn’t seem to be enough. Hype will get its own trending board and users are limited to three “Hypes” per week.

YouTube will also soon allow creators to organize their content in seasons and episodes. I’m not sure if this will replace or join Playlists, but I hope it’s the latter. Just as Netflix starts auto-playing content you’re previewing, YouTube will also begin auto-playing videos on a channel when you click on it.

The Community Hub on the YouTube Studio app is upgrading to allow creators to reply to their comments using AI. They’ll see AI-powered reply suggestions under viewers’ comments (similar to the response options offered on Gmail) that they can choose from. YouTube hopes to make the Hub more interactive and engaging with this one.

To further foster the creator-viewer relationship, YouTube is introducing a brand-new space called Communities. This will be a space creators can enable on their channels if they like and will allow a two-way interaction with their audiences. Basically, it’s Discord. Both the creator and their subscribers can post images, ideas, or any suggestions that they might have. YouTube’s probably looking at this as a way to allow subscribers more agency.

The Inspiration tab is also getting an AI-powered revamp. It’ll soon allow creators to take an idea all the way from conception to a “fully-fledged project.” You’d be able to brainstorm with it and ask it for suggestions on the title, thumbnail, or video outline. It’s nothing you can’t use ChatGPT for, but probably having it embedded in the YouTube Studio app keeps users in the comfy confines of Google’s products.

Last year, YouTube announced Dream Screen, a feature that lets you put AI-generated video or image backgrounds on your Shorts videos. This year, it’s upgrading that using Veo. Apparently, Veo will make the background more “realistic.” You just need to input a prompt and a desired style (Cinematic, Watercolor, etc.) It’ll also allow standalone videos on Dream Screen that creators can insert as filler scenes, transitions, or an opening or closing scene to add more context.