Typically, product launches and corporate events are full of flashy slideshows highlighting two or three interesting items. But the Made on YouTube presentation on Tuesday rolled out more than 30 meaningful updates with a single goal in mind: to help serve creators.
Take A/B YouTube title testing, just one of the dozens of AI-powered tools the company will be rolling out by the end of the year.
“If you talk to a creator, they’ll say they spend hours obsessing over six or seven words. We can take that guesswork out and save them time,” Amjad Hanif, vice president of creator product for YouTube, told TheWrap. “You can really put that energy back into creation.”
The two-hour presentation was an onslaught of updates for the main version of YouTube, Shorts, live streaming, podcasting and ecommerce. It was an experience that was borderline overwhelming, even for a reporter who had all the updates under embargo. But if you look between the lines, YouTube’s new tools tell a story about where the company sees the future of entertainment. That future involves live streaming, increased globalization and lots of AI. It’s also a future that YouTube clearly hopes will be driven by creators who see YouTube as their primary platform to build their business upon.
That onslaught was very likely intentional. Between Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, Bluesky, SnapChat, Twitch, Substack and even gaming-centric platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, creators have more options than ever. We’re also in an era where platform diversification isn’t just common but expected. Nearly every full-time creator now posts on multiple social media sites with many intentionally embracing the unique capabilities of each, like using TikTok for shortform content that will increase audience reach or using Instagram to sell products.
As for YouTube, before these announcements, many creators TheWrap has spoken to already see the platform as home. Now it seems likely that goodwill is likely only going to increase.
But as promising as YouTube sees its future, leadership is also acutely aware of the dangers around these technologies. The general population’s general mistrust around AI and the potential horrors of live streaming in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder are issues that YouTube heads addressed in their conversation with TheWrap.
The general vibe at Pier 57 was positive, and creators sounded impressed and optimistic. Specifically, YouTube’s new tools for shopping and brand deals were repeatedly praised as was Ask Studio, an AI-powered chatbot that lets creators more easily engage with their channel’s analytics.
“They’re giving us more tools that are allowing independent content producers to do things that have never been done before with teams of potentially just one person,” Colin Rosenblum, one of the co-hosts of “Colin and Samir,” one of the best known and respected creator advice podcasts, told TheWrap.
Here’s how YouTube’s latest updates may turn the entertainment game on its head.
YouTube could make creators even more money
No matter what study you look at, the same answer emerges: YouTube is the most profitable social media platform for creators. Since 2021, the company has paid $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies (Note: YouTube does not disclose the specific breakdown by category).
The primary reason for that is YouTube’s Partner Program, which over the years has offered creators a steady payout based on content performance compared to creator funds that have come and gone at places like TikTok.
“We call it the Partner Program because we consider them partners. It’s something you can rely on and build a business on,” Hanif said. Thanks to four new tools, creators may be getting even bigger paydays.
The first two updates — auto timestamps (which has already been released) and auto tagging (which will roll out to U.S. creators in the coming year) — are especially crucial for creators in product-focused niches like beauty. Using AI, YouTube will be able to automatically pinpoint the time when a creator is talking about a product and tag that item if it happens to be eligible for a brand deal. These systems could potentially save creators hours of manual work. Similarly, an update that allows brand links to be added to Shorts is poised to be big for YouTube’s shortform creators.
But, according to Samir Chaudry, co-host of “Colin and Samir,” the update that stands as the biggest monetization game changer for creators is the introduction of dynamically inserted brand segments.
The way sponsored segments work now is that once a branded segment is sold to a company, it’s forever in that video. These are the types of segments where a creator will note a portion of their video is sponsored by a specific company.
“Oftentimes that can be not as good of an experience for the audience and for the brand because, let’s say, three years from now, whatever was said in the integration that lives in that episode forever might not be relevant anymore,” Chaudry said.
But with the dynamic brand segment option, which will start testing early next year with a planned rollout for 2026, creators will be able to resell these slots. Just like how Hulu and NBC have a rotating roster of brands supporting various segments, YouTube creators will have that too.
“Brand deals are the largest part of how most creators make money. Giving us the ability to swap out brands and have it run for a limited amount of time, that’s a pretty significant change and I think actually acknowledges the maturity of the space,” Chaudry said.
Navigating a new era of AI tools
Several of the tools YouTube announced during its presentation were built using Google’s AI model Gemini and created alongside the DeepMind team. Those run the gamut between tools specifically designed to create AI-generated content, like adding Veo 3 to Shorts, to tools that assist in tasks, like edit with AI, a Shorts option that turns raw footage into a rough draft of a shortform video. While the former may be fun for some creators to play with, it’s the latter feature that will likely prove to be revolutionary.
Take the customized AI chatbot, Ask Studio. The offering, which will be available in the U.S. in the coming weeks, lets users talk to a chatbot that understands the nuances of their specific channel. It’s able to break down everything from audience and device demographics to suggesting types of content that may perform well for that creator.
“We have entered into a new phase in the internet where we get to have conversations with the internet in a way that we couldn’t before,” Chaudry said, noting that it’s “challenging” to take the time to understand channel analytics.
“One of the wonderful things about being a creator is that you have a lot of information, and you can acknowledge the audience’s preferences and comments,” Rosenblum said. “I found in the limited time that we’ve played with Ask Studio, we can understand our audience a lot better.”
There’s also auto-dubbing with lip syncing, which automatically changes a speaker’s mouth movements to better fit their non-native language — a tool that will help creators increase their global audience. So far, over 60 million videos have already been auto-dubbed across 20 languages, according to YouTube. There’s even an AI tool that detects whether a monetized creator’s likeness is being used without their permission, an option that used to only be available to celebrities. Both of these products took roughly two years to develop.
“A thing that surprised me [during testing] is that creators are — depending on the content — actually OK with skits or sketches that include their likeness, if it builds their brand and appeals to their fans,” Hanif said.
But all of these developments haven’t come without trial and error. Following concerns about how AI-content can confuse viewers, the platform announced in 2024 that it will label all generative AI content. YouTube also recently came under fire for using AI to alter creators’ videos in minor ways without telling users. At the time, Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s creator liaison, noted that the platform is working on an opt-out feature.
“We will create these tools and give creators a choice on how they want to apply them to their content,” Hanif said.
The future of community-building is live
Investing in AI and shortform content may seem like no-brainers, but YouTube’s investment in live-streaming is a bit surprising. According to the company, over 30% of daily logged-in YouTube users watched live content in the second quarter. And out of the 100 million hours of podcasts YouTube viewers watch daily, as of July, 30% of those hours came from live streams of podcasts or premieres.
This boom is why YouTube invested in tools like combining the chat for live streams taking place on YouTube proper and Shorts and adding in side-by-side ads for live streams. Aaron Filner, senior director of live and community on YouTube, sees going live as a way creators are deepening their connection to their audiences.
“The community seems to love it, and we see more and more podcasts choosing to go live,” Filner told TheWrap. “It’s for the same reasons that a lot of other content goes live, which is that having that real time connection, that authenticity, knowing that it’s happening in one take in real time, is meaningful to people.”
YouTube also saw promising results after the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Chargers game, which allowed several streamers to live stream the event and provide their own commentary using a feature called “Watch With.” Filner noted that the company is interested in bigger events like the NFL game, but the tools announced during Made on YouTube are more designed for everyday live streaming use.
“What we see is that people are more engaged,” Filner said. “There’s a chance to really get this additional perspective — the perspective of their choice, — as opposed to just one perspective, which is what you currently see from traditional broadcast.”
As optimistic as he is about the community live streaming encourages, Filner is also aware of the risks that come with this type of content. Shortly after Charlie Kirk’s murder, videos of his shooting were circulated across TikTok. Most of these were uploaded content, but it’s not difficult to imagine this type of graphic violence appearing in a live stream of the event.
“In terms of very disturbing content happening very quickly, YouTube has a broad array of safety mechanisms to prevent that content from being available on YouTube, and those are designed to work very fast for more broad moderation needs,” Filner said. “We are really interested in making [live streaming] easier and better for creators, and it’s something we’re continuing to work on.”
