GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR YouTube is experimenting with AI-generated summaries on the home feed in the Android app.
These AI summaries replace video titles for some users, causing frustration.
While AI summaries on the YouTube homepage may be inevitable, the current lack of a title appears to be a bug.
Back in August last year, Google introduced sweeping changes to its Discover feed, replacing original post titles with AI-generated summaries. If you use Discover frequently, you must have already noticed how Google now clubs multiple news sources from different websites into a single block. And because it’s generated with AI, it is also prone to hallucinating and spitting out incorrect or ill-fitting headlines. That, however, isn’t stopping Google from expanding the feature to other platforms, and it has now started testing in YouTube.
A few users have taken to Reddit to post about AI-generated summaries being tested on YouTube. In two examples shared by Redditors madcuntKore and GrimmOConnor, the titles of YouTube videos are swapped out for synopses, but without a title. Currently, the reports appear to be limited to the YouTube app for Android.
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In a feed, you see video thumbnails, followed by collapsible boxes with these summaries. As you would expect, it looks somewhat absurd, especially since it forces users to expand each AI-generated snippet to learn what the video is about.
Given that requirement, scrolling through your YouTube feed, trying to find an entertaining or relevant video to watch, can take up more time. That would be counterintuitive, considering YouTube presumably wants people to spend less time scrolling to find or guess about the contents video.
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