YouTube’s conversational AI starts rolling out, but only to Premium subscribers on Android

YouTube has started rolling out its conversational AI feature that can answer questions about the video you’re already watching. The newly available feature will only be available for those who pay for YouTube Premium and use an Android device to watch.

YouTube mentioned that it would be rolling out a conversational AI feature sometime late last year. Since then, the water has been quiet with Bard switching to Gemini in the meantime. The feature was said to be a standalone tool that could allow users to ask questions about the video for answers before actually finishing it.

YouTube has officially announced that users in the US will begin to see the conversational AI tool popping up on their devices. One caveat, of course, is that YouTube Premium members will seemingly get this opportunity for the time being, with no word on whether it will expand to more users in and outside of the US.

The new AI feature appears subtly in the YouTube app. We are currently seeing the feature available on our personal devices. The comments bubble on Android will show a secondary page dot. Swiping left on the comments card will reveal a new card called “Ask.”

You can tap the entire card to reveal a new page that looks like any other chatbot page. Alternatively, hitting “Summarize video” will immediately enter that command into the chatbot, resulting in a synopsis of YouTube’s AI model. YouTube hasn’t made it clear what specific model it’s using, but it’s presumably powered in some form by Gemini.

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