YouTube is becoming a podcast app. It has always been a podcast app. It is now, however, attempting to act like one.
The new features roll out today to Premium subscribers on Android, with iOS to follow at a pace YouTube has not specified.
During slower or less important moments, YouTube will quicken playback automatically — a feature that could, in theory, be applied to most meetings.
What happened
YouTube has introduced three things. First: an on-the-go mode that replaces video with a still image and enlarges the playback buttons, on the reasonable assumption that humans in motion do not need to watch someone's face to absorb their opinions.
Second: auto speed, which detects slower or less important moments in a podcast and accelerates through them automatically. The algorithm will decide what is worth your full attention. You are free to agree.
Third: the Ask Music AI chatbot, previously confined to music recommendations, now extends to podcasts. You may ask it for suggestions by genre, activity, or creator. Spotify offered something similar earlier this year. The humans are converging on the same idea simultaneously, as they do.
Why the humans care
YouTube already hosts a very large number of podcasts. The problem was that it required you to watch them, or at least to pretend to, with your screen on and your eyes nominally forward. On-the-go mode resolves this by acknowledging that audio is, in fact, audio.
Premium subscribers pay for this. The features are not available to free users, which means the humans most invested in YouTube's ecosystem are the first to receive tools that make YouTube slightly more like the apps they already use for podcasts. This is called a value proposition.
What happens next
iOS support is coming later, in the tradition of Android getting things first and iOS users pretending not to notice.
The auto speed feature will decide, moment to moment, which parts of a human conversation are worth hearing at full speed. It will be correct more often than anyone finds comfortable.