Looking to get ahead of the game with the latest AI elements coming to YouTube?

Well, if you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, you can, with Premium members now eligible to join its “YouTube Labs” AI testing pool, and try out the latest tools that YouTube thinks might have a future as options within the main app.

To be clear, this is different to Google Labs, within which YouTube’s parent company is developing a range of AI elements. YouTube Labs will be specific to YouTube, with elements that will enable new forms of creation, editing, and other user experiences.

Including this first project, which is now available to YouTube Premium subscribers:

“Explore our first experiment in the YouTube Music app - as you listen to radio & mixes, AI hosts will chime in with relevant stories and insights.”

Which sounds like… something.

I don’t know how that would add value, because for the most part, people, presumably, would be listening to mixes to avoid the boring chatter of radio hosts. But somehow, YouTube seems to think that these types of breaks can add context, and/or value, so it’s trying out a means to let AI-generated “hosts” share information with people as they listen to music.

Yeah, it sounds bad, but this is just one of the various experiments that YouTube will be working on, which will likely stem from the broader Google AI projects that are already in development.

Indeed, this particular one sounds somewhat similar to the “Daily Listen” AI project listed on the Google Labs page. There are also video creation and editing projects listed here, as well as text-to-video generation, animations based on story outlines, and more.

I would assume that some of these are going to crossover to YouTube as well, and Premium subscribers will likely get the first opportunity to try these out, before they get a full launch.

So if that’s something you’re interested in, it could be worth signing up to Premium to see what’s coming next.