Google is testing a new search experience similar to "AI mode" on the YouTube platform, allowing users to ask YouTube questions in a conversational manner and obtain a results page that integrates long videos, short videos, and text information. This experimental feature called "Ask YouTube" (tentative translation: "YouTube Questions and Answers") is currently open to YouTube Premium subscribers in the United States who are 18 years or older and need to be manually turned on in the account settings.
After turning on this function, the "Ask YouTube" button will appear in the YouTube search box. When clicking the search bar, a series of example prompts will also be displayed, such as "Interesting clips of baby elephants playing", "Volleyball rules summary" and "A brief history of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission". If the user clicks "Ask YouTube" without typing anything in the search box, they will be taken to a separate page where they can see more recommended questions and a question box where they can enter text.
In actual experience, when a user initiates a search through "Ask YouTube", the page will briefly display a loading icon, and then generate a full page of AI-organized results. For example, taking "A Brief History of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Mission", a text description outlining the mission will appear at the top of the page, along with a bullet-point list of time points, such as the date of the moon landing and the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. Under the text introduction, the page will recommend a video from the "The Life Guide" channel and jump directly to the time period related to the launch day. It will also display video galleries according to thematic sections, such as "From Launch to Splashdown", "Historical Images and Behind-the-scenes", "Moon Surface Moments" and other sections, which also include several YouTube Shorts.
At the bottom of the results page, the system will give suggestions for follow-up questions, such as "Who were the astronauts on Apollo 11?" "Apollo 11 conspiracy theory", etc., and provide an input box to continue asking questions or start a new search. Clicking on "Who were the Apollo 11 astronauts?" regenerated the page into a slightly differently formatted set of results, including a grid of background information on Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. In contrast, when asking questions with the keyword "Apollo 11 conspiracy theory", only a traditional-style YouTube search result list is returned instead of an AI-generated page.
However, this test also exposed a factual error in the AI-generated results: the system claimed that the old Steam Controller, which was discontinued many years ago, did not have a joystick, when in fact it was equipped with one. This mistake reminds users that even though these AI-generated search results pages look very convenient and well-organized, they still need to be vigilant and perform necessary fact-checking when using them.
YouTube officials said that they are working to expand this experiment to users who have not yet subscribed to Premium. Combined with Google's continuous iteration on the "AI model" and its recent move to introduce this model into Gmail, it is generally believed that "Ask YouTube" is likely to be regarded as one of the company's key AI product forms in the future.