The shift began in May, when YouTube introduced a prompt-based way to build a personalized video feed around interests, moods or topics. It is now expanding that experiment: US users will soon be able to create and save multiple custom feeds across web, mobile and TVs.¹

At its Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, the company framed the feature as a practical answer to an overwhelming catalogue. Users can describe what they want — a podcast lineup for a commute, say, or calming commentary — and Gemini will assemble a dedicated tab that can be refined through prompts and ratings. The main recommendation feed remains in place, but YouTube says the new tabs offer a faster route through its more than 20 billion videos. “The world is always at your fingertips,” said Emily Moxley, YouTube’s VP of Product Management for Viewer AI.²

The same event made clear that AI will have an even larger role behind creators’ dashboards. Ask Studio is expanding to iOS and Android, while new tools can assess an unpublished video’s pacing, structure and storytelling; generate titles and thumbnails; and test different versions against audience segments.³ YouTube plans to go further by testing up to three video cuts and, later this year, automatically swapping out an underperforming thumbnail.⁴

That automation is being sold as a time-saver, not a replacement for creative judgment. But YouTube has not released data showing that the tools improve creators’ results. Amjad Hanif, the company’s vice president of creator products, drew the boundary at AI-made work: concern rises “when it feels like it’s not actually from the creator, but the tools have taken over.”⁵

The tension is already visible beyond YouTube’s own toolkit. In a reposted demonstration, Elon Musk amplified a creator’s claim that a Grok bot managing a YouTube channel was “better than I am” — a boast that captures both the appeal of automation and the unease it can provoke.Elon Musk (elonmusk)⁶