YouTube digs deeper into AI, changing your homepage and how videos are made, but exec says, 'we only succeed when creators succeed'

In a Pier 57 auditorium filled with YouTubers of all ages and stripes, I felt a bit out of place.

I haven't posted a full-length YouTube video to my channel in years, but listening to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, other execs, and especially YouTube creators enthuse about new AI-boosted viewer and creator tools, I felt inspired again to, if not create, get back to my regular YouTube viewing habit.

The yearly Made on YouTube event, a confab on all the latest notable YouTube platform updates from creators and video consumers, featured a cavalcade of young, energetic YouTubers like Happy Kelli (Kelli Erdmann), Gremlita (Mina Le), and Derrick Gee, each of them introducing some fairly significant updates to the video platform, which Mohan claims has supported over half a million full-time jobs and contributed $60B to the US GDP in 2025.

Lance Ulanoff / Future Lance Ulanoff / Future Lance Ulanoff / Future Lance Ulanoff / Future Most notable for those who can't get enough of the creator videos and shorts are the new AI-powered Custom Feeds.

While your current YouTube homepage is probably filled with subscriptions and algorithmic recommendations for your next watch, custom feeds are built via a prompt ("I want to see videos of tuxedoed cats playing jazz on pianos") and then live in a tab at the top of your feed.

According to YouTuber Mina Lee, who gave the demo, the feeds constantly update with the latest videos that fit your request.

Custom Feeds is expected on desktop and mobile this Fall (before the end of this year).

YouTube YouTube Just months after Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled " Ask YouTube" at Google I/O, YouTube is enhancing the AI-powered chatbot with stronger conversational skills and the ability to see inside videos.

As we saw in the demo, you can go on quite a conversational journey with Ask YouTube, which can dig into the video's content and return time-stamped, contextual results, even pulling information from the comments. (Image credit: YouTube) Naturally, this journey could continue all the way to results with product specs and even the ability to buy a product directly.

For now, the video creator who first talked about the product might miss out on affiliate revenue unless someone clicks from the Ask YouTube result to the original video.

YouTube execs later told us they want to ensure that the affiliate connection still works.

Putting the agentic in video editing Even if some of the AI tools YouTube is unveiling might appear to temporarily undermine creators, the new agentic editing tools look like a game changer.

Mobile App users will soon find "Ask Studio", a conversational editing assistant that lets you use natural language for edits.