YouTube is testing its AI-based comment topic summariser feature for Shorts. The experimental feature will only show up on the video streaming giant’s iOS and Android apps for now and will be available on a limited number of Shorts with large comment sections from select creators. The feature sorts the comment section into popular topics based on user-generated comments. AI topics were first announced last year and were later rolled out globally for long-format videos. Notably, YouTube is also testing an AI-powered custom green screen image generation tool dubbed Dream Screen for Shorts.

YouTube tests AI topics for Shorts

In its dedicated support page for test features and experiments, YouTube shared details of the feature. The platform said it is testing the comment topics summariser feature for Shorts. The minute-long vertical videos with infinite scrolling have become a popular addition to the streaming platform.

YouTube is now adding the comment topics feature to boost the participation of users in conversations. The AI-powered topics summarise feature works in a straightforward manner. It pulls all the published comments to find similar keywords. Then, it categorises the most-talked-about keywords into different sections and generates a title for each topic.

In long-format videos, these topics can be seen on the mobile app once the user enters the comment section. On the top of the section, a new ‘Topics’ tab appears that shows different labelled topics when clicked. Each topic shows all the relevant comments to help users easily find interesting conversations and contribute to them.

YouTube stated that during the test, the AI topics will be visible on Shorts by select creators who are part of the experiment groups. The company will choose Shorts with large comment sections and show topics. Front-end visibility will also be for a small number of users viewing the videos on the mobile app.

In case creators want to remove any topic, they will have to delete individual comments that appear under a specific topic. Further, YouTube explained that the AI only uses published comments to thematically align them, and comments which are held for review, those containing blocked words, or from blocked users will not be considered.