YouTube is adding AI hosts to radio and mixes in the YouTube Music app as part of a new test available through its new Labs program. The hosts are designed to “deepen your listening experience by sharing relevant stories, fan trivia, and fun commentary about your favorite music,” YouTube says in a blog post.
If you want to see if you’re eligible to join YouTube Labs, which is dedicated to AI-focused experiments on the platform, to potentially try the feature out, check YouTube’s website; through the program, “a limited number of US-based participants can test early prototypes and experiments,” according the blog post. Even though I joined YouTube Labs, I don’t seem to have access to the experiment myself. I’ve been playing YouTube Music off my phone for a little while writing this article, and I haven’t heard the hosts just yet.
Google has been steadily expanding the capabilities of the AI hosts with NotebookLM to help users review and study different topics, so trying out a similar idea to YouTube Music makes some sense. The new YouTube Labs program also follows Google’s broader Labs program for its AI experiments.
Today, YouTube also announced that some of its Premium-only features have expanded to more platforms. For example, the jump ahead feature, which uses AI to skip to the most interesting part of a video, is now “fully available” on YouTube for TV and game consoles, YouTube says. (The feature started showing up for some TV users earlier this year.)