YouTube has introduced a new set of AI-powered tools designed to reduce the manual workload of running a channel, spanning tasks from video planning and editing to community management and audience growth. The company unveiled the features at its annual Made on YouTube event in York City, with many of them powered by Google's Gemini models.

The launch was announced in a company blog post by YouTube Vice President Aparna Pappu, who noted that creators are increasingly turning to AI for everything from production to audience growth. For the millions of people who make a living on the platform, the tools could reduce how much of their work must be handled manually. The push also reflects a broader industry shift, as major social platforms including Meta and TikTok have been folding comparable AI-assisted creation tools into their own apps.

Gemini takes on video editing

YouTube is integrating Gemini into a conversational editing assistant for Shorts and the YouTube Create app, giving creators a way to make changes without working through the timeline manually. Creators can describe the edits they want, and the tool can reorder frames, trim clips, and sync music to the beat.

Manual editing remains available at any time, with changes made directly on the timeline. YouTube said hundreds of thousands of channels used its earlier Gemini editing tools throughout August 2026.

The company's first GenAI trends report found that 72% of U.S. video posters aged 14 to 44 had used AI to help create or edit content over the previous year. Adoption has not been universal, however, as some creators remain wary of the technology.

Ask Studio comes to mobile

Ask Studio, YouTube's AI assistant for creators, is expanding beyond the desktop, where it initially launched, to iOS and Android. Creators will be able to submit an unpublished video and ask the AI for feedback before it goes live, with the tool reviewing elements such as pacing, structure, and storytelling, according to the company's blog post.

A separate feature, dynamic thumbnails, lets creators upload three options and have YouTube show different versions to different groups of viewers. Pappu said creators have already run more than 40 million title and thumbnail experiments through the platform's A/B testing feature since it launched in 2024.

AI moderation and likeness protection

YouTube is also looking to take some of the work out of managing a channel through an opt-in AI moderation tool that learns how each creator prefers to handle comments and adapts over time.

The company is expanding protections against the misuse of creators' likenesses. YouTube already uses deepfake and facial detection, and Pappu said it will begin combining speaking-voice detection with facial matching later this year. Likeness controls will also be added to the mobile app.

YouTube's affiliate program for shopping already has more than 1.3 million creators enrolled and will expand to 35 countries by the end of the year. Creators in India and Brazil will be able to tag Amazon products. The company is using AI to automatically identify products in videos, giving creators another way to generate affiliate revenue.

Ask YouTube becomes a shopping assistant

YouTube is also changing how viewers use its conversational search tool, Ask YouTube. The feature is being expanded into a shopping assistant that can answer follow-up questions and organize product information into comparison tables.

Emily Moxley, YouTube's vice president of product management for viewer AI, said more than 140 million people used Ask YouTube in June, representing growth of more than 500% since December of last year. She attributed the increase to a custom Gemini model that matches complex viewer questions with the exact moments in videos where the answers appear.

YouTube also outlined additional tools for live creators, including a test of real-time auto-dubbing for live videos in early 2027. Another feature, called “live showdown,” will let co-hosts compete against each other in head-to-head streams.

The company added that microdramas have gained traction on the platform, generating more than 6.5 billion views in the first half of 2026, with watch time for the format rising 50% from a year earlier. The announcements span both sides of the platform, from creator-facing production tools to viewer-facing search and shopping. Several of the features also carry defined rollout windows — from the likeness protections due later this year to the live auto-dubbing test slated for early 2027 — giving creators concrete dates to track as the tools move from announcement to availability.