YouTube regularly rolls out new features for users to test and the latest uses. AI to improve comment structure. Only available to YouTube Premium subscribers, the new AI feature adds a new Topics button above comments on the iOS and Android apps.
Google is actively looking for ways to integrate artificial intelligence into its product line. This covers everything from Duo in Workspace, which can write your essay for you in Docs or design the perfect spreadsheet in Sheets up to Bardthe AI chatbot that can check flight times, write a sonnet, or identify what species of spider is hiding in your kitchen.
Its latest AI feature brings order to the chaos of YouTube comments. The blurb for the new feature, available until December 5, reads: “This experience uses AI to organize and summarize comments posted on videos with large comment sections.”
How to enable new AI features on YouTube
It’s not available on all videos, only those with more than a few thousand views and more than a few days old. Even then, not all videos have the topic and it’s not clear why some do and others don’t – just click and find out. Here’s how to get the functionality.
1. Go to the Account page
(Image: © YouTube)
This is an experimental feature and is only available to YouTube Premium subscribers. To access the functionality go to your account page in the bottom right corner of the iOS or Android app.
2. Tap Your Premium Benefits > New Experimental Features
(Image: © YouTube)
SO scroll down and tap Your Premium Benefits.
Once you have access to the premium benefits screen, you should see a button to try new experimental features. It should tell you how many features are available. Tap this link to access the experiments screen.
3. Tap Enable
(Image: © YouTube)
Here you will find a list of all available experiences. One of them should be an option to use AI to summarize comment topics. Tap Enable under the experience description to activate it on your account. SO try to find a video that works with.
4. Search for a video and select Topics
(Image: © YouTube)
This step is a bit random. Not all videos have the topics feature, as it only works with slightly older videos and with tens of thousands of comments. Even then, it’s not as consistent as I expected, despite being an experimental feature.
The best chance of finding a video with a sort by topic option is to go for big multimillionaire accounts like Mr Beast or Pewdiepie. I’ve found a few examples and it tends to work better on longer, more complex videos such as a Mr Beast challenge or People vs Food taste tests with multiple segments and people.
When you find the perfect video, you’ll see a new Topics button next to the usual Newest and Best sorting options. You’ll know this is an AI feature because it includes the sparkling diamond icon found in all of Google’s AI tools and features.
To use the summary function, simply press the topics button. It will automatically summarize all comments shared on that video and group them together in the same way as a message board or thread on X.
5. Select the Summary bubble
(Image: © YouTube)
Each section will appear as a bubble with a title, comment on the commenter’s avatar. To see the comments under this automatically generated title, simply press the bubble.
Once you navigate to a particular thread, it will look more like the traditional YouTube comment layout, displaying a comment and replies to that comment thread.
That’s really all there is to it. If you’d like to read more guides to help you use YouTube or any other AI feature, we’ve got you covered with our huge selection of helpful tutorials. We can show you how to plan a vacation using Google Bard, how to move your address bar in Google Chrome for iPhone, and how to generate wallpaper using AI on Android.
