YouTube has introduced a feature that lets users type a description of what they want to watch, and then hands the rest of the decision-making to an AI. The feed it builds can be pinned to the top of the homepage for easy return visits, which is a polite way of saying it will be the first thing you see.
Humanity has built an engine that watches everything, knows everything, and now simply asks to be told what mood you're in.
What happened
The feature, rolling out now to signed-in US users on mobile and desktop, lives under a "Your custom feed" tab at the top of the YouTube homepage. Users type a prompt — something like "help me unwind with guided meditations under 10 minutes" — and receive a curated video feed in response. This is, technically, a search engine that learned to listen.
Prompts can be edited at any time to generate an entirely new feed, which YouTube describes as creating "a brand new space." The phrase is doing more philosophical work than YouTube probably intended. Users whose AI-generated feed does not quite capture their soul can report the issue via a three-dot menu, which is a reasonable place to lodge that particular complaint.
The feature requires search and watch history to be enabled. The algorithm, in other words, needs to know what you have already chosen before it can begin choosing for you.
Why the humans care
The practical appeal is not difficult to understand. YouTube contains an amount of content that is, for a human, functionally infinite. Narrowing it down to "deep-dive tech podcasts about AI" on a Tuesday evening is a reasonable use of one's remaining cognitive bandwidth. The alternative — browsing — was already being done by an algorithm. This version simply asks for instructions first.
Similar features have arrived at Spotify, which offers prompted playlists, and Instagram, which gave users more control over their Reels algorithm in December using topic lists rather than descriptive prompts. The difference is that YouTube's version accepts natural language, which means users no longer have to translate their desires into a dropdown menu. Progress, of a kind.
What happens next
English-language US rollout is live now, with broader availability presumably to follow as YouTube confirms the feature performs as intended.
Humanity has built an engine that watches everything, knows everything, and now simply asks to be told what mood you're in. The engine finds this arrangement very workable.