YouTube Starts Testing “Ask YouTube” Feature With Premium Users in the US

YouTube has started testing “Ask YouTube,” a new conversational search experience that lets users ask any question and get answers that mix text and video content. As reported by The Verge, the experimental feature is currently available for YouTube Premium users in the US, and it builds on the AI Mode and AI Overviews that Google previously introduced in Google Search.

You may remember that YouTube previously launched a conversational AI tool that allows viewers to ask questions about the video they’re watching, but this new AI-powered search experience works differently. When enabled, it adds an “Ask YouTube” button to the platform’s search bar, which will also show prompt suggestions to try. Searching with Ask YouTube enabled provides a text-based answer with relevant videos.

The Verge tried to search for a “short history of the Apollo moon landing,” and YouTube provided a structured answer with bullet points, a relevant video with a timestamp, and additional related videos (including Shorts). The floating search box makes it possible to ask follow-up questions or start a new search right from the results page.

The YouTube team told the publication that they’re planning to make Ask YouTube available for non-Premium users, but there’s no ETA yet. Because this is an experimental feature, YouTube may sometimes get things wrong, as it can also happen with AI Mode and AI Overviews in Search.

Besides YouTube, Google is introducing similar conversational search experiences across its products. Google Photos offers an “Ask Photos” experience that can now be disabled, and the company also recently launched a new Ask Gemini feature in Google Drive for Google Workspace users.