Gemini Omni Is Now in YouTube Shorts Remix. Creativity Tool or AI Slop Machine?
YouTube continues to double down on AI with its latest addition of Gemini Omni to Shorts Remix and the YouTube Create app.
With this, creators will be able to remix an eligible Shorts by adding their own prompts and images.
According to YouTube: "Remixing with Omni delivers a fresh way for users to create and build on each other's imagination."
YouTube's Gemini Omni at work.
The idea sounds good, but we know this isn't what the majority of AI users will do (the building on each other's imagination part). Many viewers already have an adverse reaction to AI. With this tool available to everyone 18 and older, the world of AI slop expands even more.
Anyone using Gemini Omni to remix Shorts will have digital watermarks, identifying metadata, and links back to the original video.
Source: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-news-google-io-2026/
You can now build a custom feed with YouTube Premium!
YouTube is running a test for people with YouTube Premium that lets them build a custom feed. This is only available in the US for mobile and web.
When you turn this feature on, you'll see the "Your custom feed" chip at the top of your home page. Click on it and type a prompt or use one of the suggested prompts.
You can add on or edit the prompt to refine your feed. Whenever you come back to the custom feed chip. YouTube will remember your last prompt and update your feed.
From the looks of it, you could actually use the "Your custom feed" as another search function.
It even takes consideration to channels and content you watch a lot, so you can add to your prompt to find people with similar channels.
For example, I wrote in "I want playthroughs of Stardew Valley from new players" and YouTube's suggestion has "Who are chaotic like CallMeKevin" because I've been watching a lot of videos from CallMeKevin.
Because of this consideration, the custom feed won't work if you have your watch history turned off.
This feature is available until May 26th on https://www.youtube.com/new. Note that it is only for people who has YouTube Premium.
Is YouTube Ask a competitor to TikTok's?
YouTube Ask, not to be confused with Ask Studio, is YouTube's newest way to search. It's made to feel like you're having a conversation, by being able to ask questions and follow up on it.
This experiment lasts until June 8th, so if you're a Premium user, try it out before it goes away! https://www.youtube.com/new
This feature isn't perfect. AI isn't perfect, and can be extremely wrong while being confident about it. Andrew Kan goes through it in his article and livestream if you want to learn more about YouTube Ask.
Andrew Kan
Andrew in the article brings up an interesting thought: "YouTube would rather be the place you ask the question in the first place."
It made me think about TikTok's own search feature and how more and more people (particularly kids) were using TikTok to search instead of Google. This could be one of YouTube's solution to get people to search up what they usually would on Google, but on YouTube.
We'll have to see how YouTube roll this feature out once the testing is over, and how people will react to it.
