Spotlight on YouTube AI Features - YouTube is Testing a New Feature That Skips to ‘Best Parts’ of Videos

As content creators of any level know, YouTube is by far the most important social media platform for brands and personal creators alike. Whether you’re just launching a channel for fun or creating content for the biggest brands in the world, YouTube can make or break careers these days.

And if you want to stay ahead of the curve for YouTube in particular, it’s worth following when YouTube announces that it’s experimenting with new AI technologies that could revolutionize its platform.

According to reports, YouTube is currently testing a new AI-powered feature that will allow users to skip to the “best parts” of a video they’re watching. Let’s explore these new YouTube AI features and what it could mean for your YouTube content.

YouTube’s AI-powered features

As we’ve seen over the past several months, artificial intelligence is changing the bedrock of all industries, including all types of creative and content creation industries in particular. We’ve even seen AI-powered search features make it into our Soundstripe app, and royalty free AI music begins to become a conversation.

So, it shouldn’t be surprising that YouTube is experimenting with new AI-powered features on its platform. And, in truth, YouTube has been working on this for some time and already has a handful of AI features rolled out, including:

• YouTube Create: YouTube’s app for mobile creators, which includes AI features
• Dream Screen: YouTube’s AI-generated backgrounds for Shorts
• Aloud: YouTube’s AI-powered dubbing tool
• Research Tab: AI-powered insights for your channel in YouTube Studio

YouTube is also experimenting with new AI features and innovations in its platform, including a comment topics summarization by AI feature and a conversation AI tool that helps explain the content that you’re currently watching.

YouTube’s “best parts” AI feature

But what might be most exciting (or scary, depending on how you view your YouTube content) to most creators will be this experimental new AI-powered feature that YouTube is beginning to test, allowing viewers to jump ahead to the “best parts” of a video.

According to reports from 9to5Google, this new feature would be an addition to the double-tap skip tool that already exists in the YouTube app. Users can quickly tap twice to move their video ahead 10 seconds. If you tap more times, the video will skip ahead further.

This new YouTube AI feature could potentially work by collecting data about the parts of a video that users are most interested in skipping forward to and allowing viewers to automatically jump to the “best parts” of a video to view there.

What a “best parts” feature could mean for creators

The ramifications of this change could actually be quite substantive for content creators of all types, and it’s important to monitor how these changes are potentially made to the YouTube platform.

Most notably, if you’re using ad reads in your videos or call-outs to sponsors, and your viewers are skipping forward through these sections, YouTube might eventually allow viewers to skip your ads or break in favor of a more substantive viewing experience.

This is great news for YouTube users, but maybe not the best news for content creators looking for more monetization options and sponsored partnerships with brands. It’ll also be interesting to see how these “best parts” skips could affect YouTube's monetization calculations regarding watch times.

Tips to be ready for AI-powered “best parts” features

Ultimately, these AI-powered features are nothing new. YouTube has always been focused on improving its users' viewing experience. Over the years, YouTube has rolled out dozens, if not hundreds, of optimizations and improvements that have improved the viewing experience for users.

This YouTube AI feature, in particular, has the potential to fundamentally change how many content creators have operated over the past few months and years, so if you’d like to stay ahead of these potential changes, here’s some general advice:

• Try to make your videos interesting and watchable from beginning to end.
• If you do ad reads or sponsored breaks, try to make them interesting as well.
• Experiment with breaking up your ad reads throughout your videos, not just isolated to one section.
• Try ad reads or sponsored content at the end of your videos rather than the beginning.
• Communicate these changes with your sponsors and brainstorm new ways to recommend products or services to your audience.

Ultimately, the best way to be ready for any changes coming to YouTube or any social media platforms is to focus on creating quality content that is helpful, empathetic, and engaged with your niche and audience. 

If your content resonates with your audience and your clients or sponsors align with your niche, then your viewers will never have any reason to let these YouTube AI features recommend skipping any of your videos.