YouTube is testing a new AI Overviews feature for search and discovery powered by Gemini. A “small number” of YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. will notice a video results carousel popping up for some English-language search queries. The feature taps AI to highlight clips from videos deemed most helpful for a particular search. Initially, the feature will appear in response to practical inquiries, aiming for a more helpful response to things like product inquiries and requests for information about a place or activity. The idea is to provide quick highlights from several videos.

“If this sounds familiar, it’s because it mirrors the AI Overviews that Google has been rolling out across Search,” writes Digital Trends, noting that effort “has already hit more than a billion users, but it’s also been controversial.”

Google’s AI summaries have garnered attention “for mistakes, strange advice, and valid concerns about steering traffic away from the original sources,” Digital Trends reports. “YouTube creators are already raising similar red flags, worried that AI summaries could hurt their views and engagement overall.”

Google Search rolled out AI Overviews in May 2024 after a year of testing and it is now in about 100 countries. The tool “tries to save you some clicks by aggregating information from the links populated in your search results and succinctly delivering what it believes to be the information you’re looking for,” Engadget explains, calling the YouTube version “something of a highlight reel for certain videos,” while the Google Search returns “show LLM-generated text summaries”

Either way, the approach has raised “questions about the revenue model for creators” and “how AI-generated clip reels would affect their incomes.”

“Users may get the information they need without ever clicking into full videos,” Tom’s Guide concurs, though it does see potential upside: it could help users “say goodbye to endless scrolling” as AI Overviews helps to “make finding the right videos faster and more efficient.”

In a support post, YouTube ask users who are presented with the AI Overviews carousel option to “check it out and send us your feedback by tapping the 3-dot menu and selecting either a thumbs up or thumbs down.”

Engadget notes that Google hasn’t said how long the YouTube pilot will run, or whether there are plans to expand it beyond Premium subscribers.