YouTube rolls out AI-enabled editing tools amid a brewing arms race for creators

At its Made on YouTube event, YouTube demoed “Dream Screen”, an experimental generative AI tool for its Shorts video offering that will generate AI-generated video or photo backgrounds in seconds based on prompts.

In a live demonstration, YouTube executive Matthew Simari showed how the feature works. With a simple prompt, AI creates a video of a dragon flying over New York City, and of a dog driving a car, highlighting Google’s expertise in generative AI space.

The “Dream Screen” is a tool for YouTube Shorts that will allow creators to use prompts to generate videos or backgrounds for their content. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

The “Dream Screen” feature is targeted at content creators who are big on making Shorts, the TikTok-like short-form video feature YouTube launched in 2020. According to the video giant, YouTube Shorts now tops 70 billion daily views each month from more than 2 billion signed-in users. While long-form content remains the best way for creators to develop and engage with viewers, YouTube has been focusing on Shorts as it reaches out to new audiences.

YouTube also introduced a new AI feature in YouTube Studio that will generate topic ideas and outlines for potential videos. The AI suggestions will be personalised to individual creators, and will be based on what’s already trending with audiences.  The video platform will also roll out an AI-powered music recommendation system that will take a written description of a creator’s video and suggest audio to use.

A new AI-powered dubbing tool lets creators automatically dub their videos into foreign languages, a move aimed at expanding the reach of videos beyond a certain territory where the creator is based. Thursday’s event also saw the announcement of a new app called YouTube Create, which will make it easy for creators to make Shorts.

“Made on YouTube” is an annual event where Google’s subsidiary shares a roadmap on how it plans to engage with the community of content creators. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

“If you really wander the whole YouTube, you will hear the term creator hundreds of times a day,” Mohan said during a Q&A at the end of the event. “Every time we design products and when I am sitting in product reviews, I will always look at the standpoint of creators.”

YouTube’s push to make it easy to create content on its platform comes at a time when the platform faces increased competition from TiTok and Meta’s Instagram. Google’s subsidiary’s “Made on YouTube” event was a way to lay out a long-term roadmap for the platform’s relationship with video creators as well as the music industry. YouTube invited former YouTube executive Robert Kyncl, now CEO of Warner Music Group and pop star Charlie Puth to the event, where the two discussed AI-generated music.

Since the beginning of the year, tech giants including Google have shifted their focus on generative AI, which can generate new content from text, photos and art. Earlier this week, Amazon revamped its Alexa voice assistant by giving human-like treatment using generative AI.