Google Using AI to Write Descriptions on Some YouTube Videos

You might find the next video you want to watch on YouTube because a computer program wrote a secret description about it.

Google announced that it is using AI to generate hidden text for videos which users upload to its YouTube Shorts platform.

The company said people are creating millions of short-form videos for YouTube Shorts but often don’t include titles and descriptions when they upload them.

That makes it tougher to find them.

Google’s DeepMind AI division has introduced its visual language model named Flamingo to help generate descriptions.

The program scans the initial frames of a video and then writes a description of what is being shown.

This text is stored as metadata on YouTube to better categorize videos and match search results to viewer queries.

YouTube said it is rolling this technology out across Shorts, and auto-generated video descriptions are already being applied to all new uploads.

The generated descriptions won’t be user-facing, the Verge reported, but will be used for metadata buried behind the scenes.

The company said it is still deciding whether to use the technology on its traditional YouTube platform that features longer videos.