Google’s experiments with adding AI across its suite of apps is showing no signs of slowing down, and the latest feature that could be coming to the company’s YouTube Music app soon is AI Hosts. Google announced the new YouTube Labs program in a blogpost on Friday, and the first feature to come out of this experiment is AI-generated hosts, which will pop in while you are listening to music.
“YouTube Labs is a new initiative dedicated to exploring the potential of AI on YouTube,” Aparna Pappu, Vice President, YouTube Labs said in the blogpost.
The YouTube Labs feature is similar to Google Labs, where the tech giant usually tests out new AI features and ascertains feedback from users before they are rolled out via a stable update.
Meet Google’s new AI Hosts:
Google says its AI music hosts are “designed to deepen your listening experience by sharing relevant stories, fan trivia, and fun commentary” while listening to their favourite music on the YouTube Music app. The feature is similar to the commentary by a Radio Jockey during a live program, but given that this information will be AI-generated, there are always chances of hallucination (AI making stuff up that isn’t true).
However, Google’s Audio Overviews feature in NotebookLM has been widely appreciated for creating podcasts out of even boring source material like research papers, corporate documents, and historical manuscripts.
Google says the AI hosts feature will only kick in when listening to mixes and radio stations. Additionally, the company is only rolling it out to a ‘limited number of US-based participants.’
Users can decide to become a tester by heading over to the YouTube Labs page and clicking on the sign up link. Once the feature is turned on, users will only have the option to snooze the AI commentary for an hour or the remainder of the day.
While YouTube has been getting many AI-powered features recently, it’s worth noting that the streaming giant’s new automatic dub feature had gained significant backlash on social media as users were forced to listen to Shorts or entire videos in dubbed languages. While creators can opt out of having their videos dubbed by the AI, viewers currently don’t have any option to opt out of seeing AI-dubbed videos and have to manually change the audio track for each video.
