YouTube Announces New AI Tools for Creators, Ask YouTube Shopping Features and Shorts Series

YouTube expanded its creator-focused toolkit on Wednesday with a range of new features. At the Made on YouTube event, the company announced updates to support the entire video-making process, from finding ideas and editing footage to managing comments and protecting creators' identities. New AI-powered capabilities are coming across YouTube Studio, Shorts, and the YouTube Create app. The platform is also adding shopping-focused functionality to its Ask YouTube conversational search feature, while Shorts is getting a new series format.

New YouTube Features

Notable additions include new tools in YouTube Studio to help creators with research, editing, and channel management. The company says its new Insights and Research destinations can help creators understand previous video performance and identify outlier videos that could inspire future content.

For creators working on drafts, YouTube Studio will offer personalised feedback covering areas such as pacing, structure and storytelling. Creators will be able to generate thumbnails that match their channel style, while dynamic thumbnails can recommend different options to different audience segments.

YouTube said creators have conducted more than 40 million title and thumbnail A/B tests since the feature launched in 2024. A video A/B testing feature will also let creators test up to three different cuts to determine which opening performs best.

Ask Studio can also work in the background to analyse older videos and suggest refreshed thumbnails.

YouTube is also bringing Gemini into a conversational editing assistant for Shorts and the YouTube Create app. This means creators can begin with suggested prompts or their own instructions, then use a chat interface to reorder frames, trim clips and synchronise music before switching back to manual timeline editing.

The platform is also testing opt-in AI-powered comment moderation that learns a creator's moderation style. For identity protection, YouTube is expanding its likeness detection tools, with speaking voice detection set to be integrated with facial detection later this year.

On the viewer front, the company is expanding Ask YouTube into a shopping companion. It lets users searching for products receive organised recommendations, including comparison tables based on their preferences. They can also ask follow-up questions directly from a video's watch page.

YouTube is also introducing Shorts series, which allows creators to organise Shorts into seasons and episodes. The format lets viewers follow a continuous story instead of watching individual clips in the standard Shorts feed. Series will appear on creators' channels and support custom thumbnails and playback across web, mobile and connected TVs.