Google is bringing conversational AI search to YouTube, marking the company's latest push to infuse its products with AI-powered discovery tools. The feature, dubbed "Ask YouTube," started rolling out to YouTube Premium subscribers in the US today as an experimental test. It transforms the platform's search bar into a chatbot-style interface that pulls results from longform videos, Shorts, and text summaries - essentially giving YouTube its own version of Google's AI Mode for search.
Google just flipped the switch on a new way to search YouTube - and it looks a lot like the conversational AI search the company's been pushing across its other products. The feature, called "Ask YouTube," went live today for YouTube Premium subscribers in the US who are 18 or older, according to YouTube's experimental features page.
The implementation is straightforward but represents a significant shift in how YouTube's 2.7 billion users might discover content. Instead of typing keywords, users see an "Ask YouTube" button in the search bar. Click it, and you get suggested prompts that read more like questions you'd ask a friend: "funny baby elephant playing clips," "summary of the rules of volleyball," or "short history of the Apollo 11 moon landing."
The Verge's Jay Peters tested the feature firsthand after enabling it on his account. The interface represents Google's attempt to make video discovery feel less like database querying and more like having a conversation with someone who knows YouTube's entire catalog.
What makes this different from YouTube's existing search is how results get packaged. The AI doesn't just return a list of videos - it assembles a response that mixes longform content, YouTube Shorts, and text explanations about whatever you're asking. It's the same pattern Google deployed with AI Overviews in Search, where the algorithm tries to answer your question directly rather than just pointing you to sources.
The timing matters. Google's been racing to embed AI throughout its product suite as competitors like OpenAI and Perplexity build search experiences from scratch around conversational interfaces. YouTube represents Google's most valuable content moat - a platform where users already spend an average of 48 minutes per day, according to industry estimates. Adding AI-powered discovery could keep people engaged longer and surface content they wouldn't find through traditional keyword search.
But Google's limiting this initial test in telling ways. The YouTube Premium-only restriction means the company's experimenting with its most committed users first - people already paying $13.99 monthly who are less likely to complain about algorithmic changes. The 18+ age gate also suggests Google's being cautious about how AI might surface content for younger users, an ongoing concern as generative AI struggles with accuracy and appropriate responses.
The feature builds on Google's broader AI search ambitions. The company rolled out AI Mode in Google Search earlier this year, letting users toggle into a conversational interface that generates responses using Google's Gemini models. YouTube's version likely taps similar underlying technology, trained on the platform's massive corpus of video content and metadata.
For creators, this could reshape how their content gets discovered. Traditional YouTube search rewards videos with strong titles, descriptions, and tags that match user queries. A conversational AI system might surface videos based on different signals - how well the actual content answers common questions, whether transcripts contain relevant information, or how the AI interprets topical relevance. That's a black box creators will need to learn to optimize for.
The experimental label gives Google room to iterate and pull back if the feature flops. YouTube's tried and abandoned plenty of discovery experiments before - remember YouTube Stories? But conversational search feels more fundamental to where the industry's headed. If users actually prefer asking questions to typing keywords, Google needs YouTube ready for that shift.
What's still unclear is how this affects YouTube's ad business, which generated $31.5 billion in revenue last year. AI-generated response pages could change where and how ads appear in the discovery flow. Google's walking a tightrope between improving user experience and maintaining the ad inventory that makes YouTube profitable.
Google's Ask YouTube experiment marks another front in the company's campaign to make AI-powered discovery the default across its ecosystem. For Premium subscribers testing it now, the feature offers a glimpse at how we might search for videos in the future - less like querying a database, more like asking a knowledgeable assistant. Whether that's actually better than YouTube's current search depends on execution, and Google's experimental approach suggests even they're not sure yet. But with competitors building conversational interfaces from the ground up, Google can't afford to let YouTube's search experience feel outdated. The real test comes when this expands beyond Premium subscribers and creators see how AI discovery reshapes their traffic patterns.
