Full Transcript for YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It

How much should AI decide what you watch on YouTube and determine what people like me create? Let's talk about it with YouTube CEO Neil Mohan right after this. For small business owners, every day is full of surprises, like when a client just cancels their order at the last minute. And you have to eat the costs because they canceled at the last minute.

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Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed and nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We have a great show for you today. We're going to talk all about AI's dramatic influence on what we watch on YouTube and what we create on YouTube, whether it's advisable and a bunch of new products and features that YouTube is releasing today.

And we're joined by the CEO of YouTube, Neil Mohan. Neil, great to see you. Good to see you, Alex. Great to be here. So I went back in the archives and I tweeted about your move from Google's ad division to YouTube 11 years ago in 2015. And I said, Neil Mohan is off to YouTube, ready to make them some money. because you had been on the ad side, it worked.

YouTube today for those who are catching up is a $60 billion annual business. You can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Netflix is 45 billion. So dramatically bigger than Netflix, more than 2 billion users globally. It's growing 13% a year. It accounts for 14% of all US streaming or viewing.

Streaming. Streaming. And that means a billion daily hours of YouTube are watched on TV alone. And the company's paid out $100 billion to creators over the past four years. So we talk about YouTube. It's not just the cat on the skateboard or the dog on the skateboard anymore. This is a media force. Yeah, you know, the first thing that comes to mind when you mention that tweet is time flies.

It's been a long time. And, you know, YouTube is really kind of everything that you described it to be there. You know, we've been around, as you know, we celebrated our 20th anniversary last year.

And you're right, we're this platform that started as a place where you would upload videos like the ones that you described. And now... We are a streaming service where two billion plus people come to every single day, connecting with millions and millions of creators. And in an essence, that's the magic of YouTube. And as a result of all of that fandom that manifests on YouTube every day, that's what creates the business opportunities, of course, that you talked about for our creators, for our partners, for the brands that work with YouTube.

But also, I think probably even more importantly, creates sort of the cultural phenomenon that is YouTube. And so that's super exciting. Yeah, and when you think about the ability of companies like Netflix to grow or Spotify to grow, Amazon Video, when I'm asked, okay, who's the big competition they're coming up against, it's often YouTube.

And you could say it's a Netflix versus HBO battle, but it's really Netflix and HBO versus YouTube. It's Spotify and Apple Podcasts, which we have big listenership on, but it's versus YouTube, where I would say most of our listenership is on, and that is a big shift.

But there's sort of a difference between YouTube and these other legacy media platforms, which is that you would have a group of people programming, thinking what the audience wants, and then adjusting based off of how the shows do for like a Netflix or an HBO. With YouTube, it's largely people programmed. And by that, I mean, it's like people like me and other creators putting videos out there, seeing the distribution that they get, finding an audience, seeing what the audience wants, and oftentimes doubling down on what the audience wants.

But a lot of that has been almost an inexact science for creators on YouTube. You listen to the algorithm and you make some of your own decisions and then you program. But now what we're seeing with the fact that I would say YouTube is the Google product that uses AI the most,

is that AI is coming into the product, coming into the programming decisions. So for instance, we're going to talk about some products and features that you're announcing today. One of them is drafts, where you upload a draft. A creator can now upload a draft on YouTube. and get feedback and suggested edits that's coming in from YouTube's AI.

When you do that, YouTube will also suggest thumbnails and it will give you feedback. Hey, your thumbnail might do better if you maybe put two faces in or look more like Mr. Beast when he's like into the camera. There's also going to be dynamic thumbnails. This is all new, which are going to be optimized based on the audience. So maybe one audience responds to one thumbnail

and then the other audience responds to another and YouTube will dynamically show them what they want. Um, you could also, this is a crazy one. You can actually AB test, not just titles and thumbnails, but you can AB test videos, which is that creators can then can now put up like a couple of videos and maybe one with, maybe we'll do that with this one where we'll do one with like a trailer, one without a trailer and see what does better, see what gets more watch time and, and is, uh, enhanced by the algorithm.

Okay. I promise I'm getting to a question.

How much do we want to let AI program what we watch on YouTube? Because this is AI effectively making programming decisions as opposed to the creators listening and intuiting versus have those programming decisions be made by humans. Yeah, it's really, it's an interesting way to frame the question, Alex. And I think what I would say kind of at the big picture level is we do use AI a lot.

Most of the people that work for me are software engineers. And our job, as I always describe, is to build the world's best stage. But it's our amazing creators, including yourself and all the success you've had around your channels on YouTube, that are the people that are on that stage. And that's sort of the mental model that I would ask people to sort of hold in your heads.

Like, if you walk the halls of YouTube every single day, you're going to hear that term creator or podcaster or artist, creators writ large, 100 times a day. And the way that I think about AI is in that context, which is how can we use the latest and greatest technology? You know, we work with companies like Google DeepMind every single day to make that stage even better.

And so it's really about doing what YouTube does, helping creators build an audience and then build a business, but to do it more efficiently and do it faster. And so a lot of those features and products that you just described, including some of them kind of hot off the press that that we're going to talk about that are made on YouTube are powered by AI, but they're doing things that are core to the creator business.

So dynamic thumbnails. Why not actually give creators the ability to have multiple thumbnails associated with their video, depending on who the audience is? A-B testing, right? That's a concept that's existed for a while. Why not allow AI to put that in the hands of every single creator? And

those are all powered by our investment in AI, using Gemini, our creation tools, like actually being able to hit the plus button on YouTube and creating videos. That's powered by models like Omni. But it's all in the service of human creativity, like what creators are looking to do around their creative ideas, but then also around their business ideas.

And that's the mental model that you should have. Going back to sort of the core AI use in YouTube, which is when you open up the app on the television screen, those recommendations that you get, the reason why they are so relevant and useful to you as a viewer is because of our investment in AI. And so that's really the way that I think You should think about our approach to the technology as a tool to empower human creativity and to bring those billions of fans that I described much more close to their favorite creators.

By the way, I don't think any platform can do what YouTube is doing just because of the level of AI you have access to. It's a real advantage over the competitors that I mentioned earlier. But then I just want to go back to this notion of like, how much do you want to let the AI decide? Because if you think about it, like this is the arts in a way.

This is where the arts are shifting. And, you know, there's always been an element of like, you know, just kind of throw something out there and see. And, you know, maybe it doesn't appeal to everybody, but you throw it out there and, you know, over time, that is what becomes the art form.

creators, because I know I'm on YouTube, they'll respond to incentives. So like if the algorithm, like YouTube, YouTube even today suggests videos to make because there's an audience for it. So they'll respond if they see that there's like an audience to be found by creating those type of videos or if they see that like if they follow the AI suggestions on where to edit, they'll do it because they think they're going to do better.

And so I guess like the big question is how much, like, is it a good idea to be trusting the AI to make all these programming decisions and hand the art effectively from our hands to its hands? Yeah, you know, the way that I would answer that question is

frame it a bit differently. So implicit in what you said is we all as the ones who are sort of coming up with the creative idea or

picking and choosing the right type of content,

we know better. We get to decide what to put in front of the audience and that's the way traditional media and Hollywood and all that has worked for decades and it's been amazing. Lots of great art has come out of that. And from the very beginning, YouTube's approach has been very different. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.

And that the first part of that mission means something very specific, which means that it means that there are no gatekeepers, nobody saying that, hey, Alex, you know, that idea is kind of cool, but maybe you shouldn't try it or maybe you should do it this way. You get to decide as a creator. This is how I want my podcast to be. This is what I want it to stand for.

This is what big technology is going to represent and fill this niche in the industry. And it's your choice. So you're deciding to do that. And what AI does and, you know, I often say replace that word AI algorithm with audience. It's the audience that is choosing. That's the difference between YouTube and other platforms. So it's not about

the AI or the algorithm, like I said, that's the stage. But what you're seeing in YouTube every single day is the audience giving you feedback. And so why should, you know, three or four people sitting in Hollywood make all those decisions for all of us as viewers? Why can't the two billion viewers who come to YouTube every single day make decisions for themselves about what they like, what they don't like? And it's that sort of entrepreneurial sort of creative energy that exists on YouTube every day.

that has allowed millions and millions of creators like yourself to flourish. And so it's not about the AI picking the content. It's about us as viewers picking the content, the exact content that we want. And nobody gets to tell us on YouTube what's good, what's not good, what's art, what's not art. We get to decide. And that's the power of an open platform like YouTube.

Yeah. And I should say I'm, I'm much happier with the YouTube version of the world than the gatekeeper version of the world, because let's face it. If, if I was trying to do big technology in the world of gatekeepers, it probably wouldn't happen. Like we exist because there are no gatekeepers. We don't need to go to the New York times to publish articles about technology.

I don't need to go to HBO to be able to make this show. Yeah, and you said something very interesting as a creator, which I think is very, a creator really understands intuitively, which is

how to make tweaks, how to respond to feedback. You know, you described it in the context of the algorithm. Well, that's just the audience giving you that signal, right? Yes. The other place where you get feedback instantaneously is right below your video on the watch page. Those comments, right? Like they are telling you whether you should do audio versus video or what have you.

And that feedback is instantaneous. And that is literally your fan base, your audience, your listeners, your viewers telling you exactly what they think about what you just did. And then it's your choice then how to incorporate it or not incorporate it as opposed to having like 10 middlemen in between deciding that for you or that feedback coming three months later after the quote unquote season is done and it's too late.

yeah and they're they're not shy so yeah be nice folks um but let's talk a little bit more about this because you know these are all the good things the thing that i think and i and it seems pretty clear the way that the world is heading this is going to be like the way that all content goes maybe not all but much of it like youtube has hit shows on it youtube is this is another announcement you're making you're leaning into more shorter mini series on youtube so youtube is starting to sort of it's not even starting it is you know while beating the legacy players but in league with that level of production as well the the thing so as we look to this i think it's good to

talk about the thing that maybe i've been getting at and haven't been clear on my questioning is

you know, doesn't it all kind of, can it all end up looking the same? Like, have you heard of like, I think it's called Instagram face. It's like the picture, the way, the same pose that everybody makes when they look at the camera and they put it on Instagram. Like there is a algorithm driven homogenization of content that's happened there.

And so how do you think about that and how do you guard against that? Yeah, you know, I

think that that's just not the way YouTube has worked. You know, you've obviously followed the YouTube story for, almost since the very beginning, you know I have as well. And I think that it honestly ends up being almost the complete opposite of that. And what I mean by that is what happens because of this lack of gatekeepers, because of this sort of entrepreneurial sort of creativity that YouTube allows, like you describe in your own case, there are millions and millions of fandoms and niches that emerge.

You know, what I think the YouTube experience is, is a bit of the opposite of that, which is when you turn on the TV, you get

very specific episodes or shows or creators based on your interests. Now, it turns out that there are millions of other people who also have those interests. So those niche sort of cultural phenomenon are not tiny, they're large because of, you know, the two billion people that come to YouTube every day, but they really are millions and millions of these types of niches.

And the same thing happens to me in my experience. And by the way, it changes through the course of the year. And I happen, you know, I go to YouTube because I love to learn, you know, kind of random esoteric things sometimes. But I also go to YouTube because I love sports and that's sort of as mainstream monoculture as it gets. And sort of YouTube sort of gives you that sort of full spectrum as opposed to any sort of homogenization.

What I would say is that because we are used so broadly really all over the world, it's very hard for that kind of homogenization to happen. And it's more about sort of these very kind of these niche interests that are also followed by, you know, a million of your closest friends. Right. Well, there's a degree of of that, maybe not in the videos themselves, but like if you think about like it's it's kind of this phenomenon on YouTube that the way that Mr.

Beast sets a lot of these trends and then people follow. The way that Mr. Beast looks at the camera in his thumbnails is something that if you... Once you take a look at it first... Are you doing those in your thumbnails? Sometimes. I'm going to pay closer attention. We've found that the shocked expression doesn't do as well as just looking concerned or a laugh or something like that.

I don't know. I don't think we're in the same category. But there has been some of this, I would call it maybe algorithmic driven homogenization in some elements on YouTube. You don't think so? You know, I think that certainly there are creators, up and coming creators that look to, you know, Jimmy just given his success on YouTube and just his success in the culture as, hey, that's a blueprint that I should try to follow.

And look, by the way, I think that that has actually always been part of the YouTube culture, like the YouTube creator culture. It's mimetic to a degree. No, like the aspect of if you've made it, your job is to actually help the next generation of creators come along. And I think creators like Mr. Beast and others really lean into that. But there is that aspect of trying to learn from those creators that have been successful.

What I'm commenting on, though, is this notion of sort of kind of homogeneity across all of YouTube. And I certainly, we don't see that in the data. And we certainly don't see, every time I go, I always, you know, one of my favorite questions is when I'm at an event or, you know, hanging out with friends is just to ask what their favorite thing is to watch on YouTube.

And I can tell you, I've been asking that question for, you know, a decade now, and I almost always get a completely unique, different answer. And I think that is more the essence of the experience on YouTube and frankly, where the longevity comes from. Okay, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, the AI might be helping more with, let's say, packaging when you think about this, the dynamic test for thumbnails and and maybe there's already A-B testing for headlines.

So, okay, it's good to know it's not gonna convert to a uniform. I mean, it helps with all of those things, but it helps with really just, like I said, it's like a, it gives us a different set of toolkits that help with different aspects of YouTube. You know, one of the core parts of YouTube that I know you're familiar with is Content ID and protecting creators' rights and their IP.

That was investment in AI well over 10 years ago. So it's sort of deeply rooted in every aspect of the company and the product. And there are places where it's more visible, right? For example, like those creation tools that are right behind the plus button on the main app. but there's places where it's just kind of deeply embedded into how YouTube works.

Totally. All right, so when you think about the content that you want on YouTube, Do you want AI generated content on YouTube? The way I look at it is we want content that connects with viewers and fans all over the world. I often sometimes say that YouTube is the world's most efficient connector of a creative idea or creative person with their audience, no matter where that audience is in the world.

And so to the extent that that is the core of what YouTube does, I want more of that type of content, right? And whether

AI is used as a tool to create that type of content, that's just more a manifestation of sort of the state of the art technology that exists today. I do believe that it is YouTube's responsibility to make sure that our creators, like yourself, have access to those tools. But it's the creator's choice and responsibility to choose which tools to use and how to use them.

And what I find is when viewers come to YouTube, it's really more that

human story or that human connection that they're looking for. And it tends to be that that type of content is what rises to the top. And I think AI in that sense is not different than other types of technology that enabled creativity in the past, whether it was, you know, the advent of the synthesizer when we were growing up, right? Like, or the drum machine or what have you.

Like there's always technology that comes along that enhances the artistic experience, but what is also true is that there's a human being that actually is sort of the maestro that's controlling it uh and i think that that's at least so far what we're seeing uh on youtube so we are seeing i see it in videos you probably see it too the use of these new technologies to actually create um a palette of content that otherwise might not have existed but it's all in service of that human storytelling.

And so that's what we're seeing on YouTube, both on the short side, but also on the long form side,

because I think people come to connect with humans. Two computers have been able to play chess against each other for a very long time. It's really only interesting on YouTube if at least one of them is human. right and some of the ai videos i mean they're getting good i don't know did you see the video recently that's been trending of uh the coke truck that sprung a leak you didn't see this one i haven't seen this one you gotta watch this we'll put it up uh when we put play the video but uh let me narrate it for you there's a coat truck on the side of the highway uh springs a leak a man with a gallon jug uh walks up to the coke the coke streaming out of the back of this

truck Puts the gallon jug in the stream and starts chugging the Coke. Then he opens up the truck next door, which happens to be a Mentos truck. And he starts dumping the Mentos out on the sidewalk, mixing it with the Coke on the floor. And it creates an explosive propellant. And he shoots out of the frame. Stands on it and he's gone. How many times did you watch it? Many times.

This was most of my weekend, actually. I wouldn't say that's a high slop. I mean, that's good. Yeah, actually, you're hitting on a key point there, Alex, which is

You asked at the beginning of your question, like, how do I think about AI generated content? Do I want more or less of it? And I think that's not the dimension along which I think. And so hopefully my answer conveyed that AI technology might be a means to that creative end, but what rises to the top is new creative ideas and concepts and things that resonate with creators' fans.

And so there isn't an explicit sort of like AI bad, everything else good or vice versa. All the kind of rules of starting with our content policies on our platform to

what resonates with audiences are independent of that factor. So you're saying basically if it's good, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Because like I said, what comes through, even in the example that you described, is there some aspect of storytelling associated with theirs? And by the way, the technology

is evolving so fast that it's also very easy to create low quality content. And so that's probably more the dimension into which to look, which is, you know, whether it's referred to as like AI slop or what have you, like that's different than AI per, you know, per se, right? Like it's always, it's about high quality content. So YouTube won't like penalize content if it's AI off the bat.

They're going to give it a shot. Not if it's not purely on that sort of aspect of it, right? And by the way, like,

what constitutes AI, right? Like, did you use some tool to do this five second thing in your video or this in the background? Well, people have been doing that since the beginning, right? No, I'm talking about like purely AI content. Yeah, so, but like, how do you, even there, how do you draw the line, right? Like, how is that put together or not? And so, like I said, it's gotta be more about the quality of the content and what's resonating with an audience.

and having that rise to the top. And we take the notion of

AI slop very seriously. I would never want our YouTube Shorts experience to basically become that or any of our experiences or surfaces on YouTube to become that. Okay, so you believe, so the term AI slop, you believe that there's a thing called AI slop and you don't want it. I mean, I think you've seen it. I've seen it. I thought you were about to say I made it, which I have, but I'm trying not to upload on YouTube.

But I have thought about creating other channels where, for instance, I would take the day's tech news, put it through Notebook LM, which is a Google product, and you can make videos from Notebook LM and then upload it to YouTube. I don't know if that's kind of like in the border of like slop and of interest. I mean, again, I think it has to do with how the audience responds, not just how the audience responds.

Yes, that that's important, as we talked about earlier, but also

how you as the creator feel about the content of that

video, right? Like, does it carry forward what you stand for editorially? Is it something that your audience expects from you? Or is it just some kind of random kind of video that's uploaded? Like, those things actually matter. And I think that that's...

what goes into what succeeds on YouTube versus not as well. Since the development of, or the inception of these AI tools, have you seen an increase in uploads on YouTube? Has the curve bended? I don't think necessarily directly correlated to that. I mean, YouTube continues to grow, continues to be a place where new creators are finding audience every day.

Sometimes I get asked this question, it's like, well, who are the most important creators on YouTube or who do you think about the most? And what I always say is the most important creator is actually that person who's hitting the upload button for the very first time today. Because that's the lifeblood of YouTube, which is creating an opportunity for the next Alex to come along and start uploading today.

And so... As YouTube has become this cultural phenomenon, of course, there are many more creators, millions of them kind of trying their hand at it. I think that that's independent of this question of AI or not. Does AI actually make some of this content creation easier and further democratized it just like YouTube did in the very early days 20 years ago? Yeah, of course.

And I think that that's a good thing. Okay, so there was not like, you know, some level of content creation happening on YouTube and then just a inflection point with these AI tools. Not that I'm aware of, yeah. That's very interesting. Okay, one more question about this and then we'll move on. Do you view AI as a competition for you? Because, you know, there was that interesting comment from like the Netflix CEO where he was like, well, my competition is sleep.

And it's like... Well, for YouTube, you can really only be watching one thing at the same time or engaged in one, maybe two, maybe two. A lot of people, they'll watch something on the TV and then they'll have shorts on in their, on their phone. But with- Do you have YouTube TV? You can do multi-view on it. Watch four games at once. So I, okay, we'll talk about Sunday Ticket, because I have some thoughts on that.

Okay, okay. But I watch YouTube mostly on the computer and phone, but to be fair, that's where I also watch like Netflix and HBO.

conversational AI bots are gonna become much more engaging, much more, especially as the AI gets better, they're gonna command, I believe, a bigger share of people's time.

there'll be an entertainment medium. And so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on like, do you view that as like, when you think about, when you do your big planning and you think about competitive landscape, has like AI chatbots

even registered for you as someplace that you might have to fight for share of time with? Yeah, I mean,

I've been, as you know, Alex, in this business for a very long time,

even before YouTube, just in this sort of media and technology. intersection, and it's always been competitive. There's always been choice. I would say that there's never been a more dynamic and kind of time that's full of choices for all of us as consumers than today. And I think on balance, that's a good thing. It allows for all of us as consumers and viewers to be in the driver's seat, which I think is the way that it should work.

And so the best way to really kind of answer that question for you is, you know, our focus is that when you're on YouTube or when you're thinking about coming to YouTube, that we really are giving you the best experience possible. That's our North Star. That's how we think about our business. Are we relevant? We have this notion on YouTube of sort of long term satisfaction.

So not just satisfaction of you as a viewer or consumer in the immediate term, but also something that feels like a worthwhile use of your time, your most precious commodity over the long term. And that's how we think about our product and business. It's how we govern ourselves. And I think that's hopefully that gives you some insight in terms of how we think about these these trade offs, because those are your choices.

And I think what it says is a you get to choose B, that it's not just about sort of an immediate sort of sugar high or what have you. It's do you view it as valuable time over the long term? And yeah, I mean, we're a place where we have kind of every type of format from 15 second shorts to 15 minute VODs to hour long podcast to, you know, three hour NFL games to 15 hour live streams.

And so we do attempt to cater to whatever our viewers are demanding when they when they come to YouTube. And that's how we think about our products. Maybe ask a Dworkish style question on this one. Like if there was an imminent you know, intelligence explosion or we've reached AGI, like that to me would be something that I'd really be wanting, I'd want to be planning for if I was in your shoes, because I just would think that talking with these bots would become much more engaging.

But it doesn't seem like it's like a, Given the way that you answered, it doesn't seem like you're sweating it yet. I mean, like I said, it is an incredibly dynamic time. Lots and lots of choices for people. I think one of the things that's really interesting about YouTube is we all as human beings, as a human species, have...

engaged in and appreciated storytelling, human storytelling, human connection through storytelling for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And that's what happens on YouTube. And I think that in the future, that aspect is not going to change. And so as long as YouTube can remain core to that, and we saw it, for example, this summer was a great example of that.

Everything from Justin Bieber at Coachella live streaming on YouTube to the 1.7 billion people all over the world who watched some FIFA content on YouTube during those kind of amazing six weeks. Or even a creator like Markiplier who took his audience along on his channel while he built this movie and then released it in thousands of theaters all over the country and became the number one movie in Hollywood over the weekend of his release.

All of that is about this long-term sort of human storytelling connection between creators and fans. And That's what I focus on because I think that in sort of whatever world comes in the future, that aspect of that sort of like deep human desire is not going to change. Okay. I want to take a quick break and then talk about the way that you work with Google DeepMind and the way that technology, AI technology in particular, is diffused within Google and why YouTube has been so good at taking what Google DeepMind has to offer and implementing it into the product.

fast. So let's do that when we're back right after this. When you're at work, you never know when you'll be interrupted. But with the Dell Pro, powered by Intel Core Ultra with vPro, no matter what distracts you, your laptop won't. It's battery optimized for the way you work, with built-in intelligence that quiets distractions when you need to focus.

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I've been covering the stuff that you've been working on since 2010, so that makes 16 years.

There's not many people I could say about that. Well, I feel like young at heart, you know? I mean, like you were saying before the break, it's probably the craziest, most interesting time to be in tech. Yeah. it is it's actually interesting to see a lot of the like sort of ad tech you forgive me if i'm wrong here but a lot of the ad tech dna kind of show up in some of the announcements uh that you're making today or like ad tech is all about like how can you get that right ad to the right person and you know similar optimization happens in youtube or like it's like how do you get that video to that right person and you know this idea of let's say creative optimization uh

is, you know, sort of central to advertising. And, you know, you could see that when you're able to A-B test a video now. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that there are

common aspects there, for sure. And, you know, you obviously have covered this media landscape forever, so you understand these nuances extremely well. I think that in both those examples, whether it's advertising, what we're doing for our brands and our viewers, or what we're doing for our creators and our viewers, they do have some common elements to them.

And one of them is that what I was describing earlier, which is it

has to be worth the viewer's time. Like that's the common element, which is, We all, as consumers and viewers, have lots and lots of things coming at us that's only increasing, to your point, and so it has to be a good use of all of our time when we're on YouTube.

giving creators the tools to do that on behalf of their for their audiences, I think is really, really important. A lot of what we focus on is not just those features that are what you experience in the main YouTube app on your phone, on your desktop, on your television screen, but are actually in YouTube Studio itself, right? Like that's where a lot of the AI goes, because those are the tools that our creators use every day to make those connections.

And so Yeah, there's some commonality there. And, you know, we do the same thing in terms of

trying to bring those tools and capabilities to brands as well, right? Like they have to think about themselves. And increasingly, some of those lines are merging, right? Like some of brands are ending up thinking about themselves as creators on YouTube, first and foremost, even before they think about the first dollar they're going to spend on media.

Yeah, totally. All right. So I teased before the break that I wanted to talk with you about the way that you work with Google's AI division, Google DeepMind. And I find it interesting because

the way that I understand AI works within Google is that basically Google DeepMind has created this division sort of it's called the engine room within the company where it's brought in like a lot of talent, AI talent and talent from other divisions. And they have effectively taken, you know, any ai innovation that the research group makes and made it available to different products like youtube like maps like gmail and sort of up to those products to then integrate the technology i

i've said it before the break i'll say it again i don't think any uh division within youtube or product within youtube has more aggressively implemented AI than YouTube. It's everywhere. I mean, we've talked about some of the announcements today. We can talk a little bit about ask, like the fact that you can ask anything underneath any YouTube video.

It will allow you to engage with the subject matter there, even if you haven't watched the full video and on the creator side, there's ask studio. So you're in the studio and you can ask questions like, how's my channel doing? What videos have been popular? Why is this video not reaching anybody at all? These types of things. Uh, it's, it's pretty dramatic.

So talk a little bit about, first of all, how you work with that engine room, whether that's the way it works and then why you've decided to be so aggressive, uh, about implementing AI to YouTube. Yeah, I mean, so first and foremost, YouTube works very closely with Google DeepMind on a daily basis. We have teams, you know, starting at my level with my counterparts, you know, Demis and Korai over there.

But all the way, probably even more importantly, at the team and working teams levels every single day. And I can give you examples of those. I would say also, you know, it has been... as we've talked about here, a big focus of mine and YouTube's, both on the creator side and all those creator tools, including many of them that we're announcing this week, but also on the viewer side and the brand side.

Actually, all facets of stakeholders at YouTube have benefited, I would argue, over the last two, three, four years from our very heavy investment in ai and our partnership with deep mind but i would say you know that i think is pervasive across all of google and all of google's products um through and through and i see that you know from my from my perch uh regular regularly and so but not everywhere i mean when i want to search a youtube video i get a much better result than when i want to search my gmail with Gemini.

I have to use ChatGPT to search Gmail, but I know when I use Ask Studio or I'm using Ask underneath the YouTube video, I'm getting- I mean, Ask is a deep collaboration, actually. It's a good example between YouTube and- Talk a little bit about it, yeah.

Google Gemini. And the idea there, and actually that's why you see at the bottom of every YouTube Ask session that you're in, a link out to Gemini in case you wanna go deeper. So that's pretty, hopefully you found that to be pretty seamless. So should we tell sorry, should we tell folks like about this ask button? Sure. You're not familiar.

Yeah, I should. There's a ask button underneath every video now where you can basically hit the button and a conversation pops up and you can talk to YouTube about the video effectively. What's your favorite set of use cases? What do you like to use it for? I use it like crazy. I mean, if I'm, let's say, okay, let's give, so if you get into an interest, surfing, running, because hiking, I get into all these, and the best place to find information on the internet period is youtube um so i will you know watch let's say let's say running right now because i'm i'm training for a race uh but i'm watching all these creators talk about strides and where to keep your heart rate

and all this stuff um some of the videos get to the point quickly others you know they want to get above eight minutes so they can insert mid-rolls

I've been advised to do that. Our clips aren't underneath eight minutes for that reason, mostly. But if they're not getting to the point where I watch the first couple of minutes and I'm like, I wonder if there's anything else that's worth continuing to watch, I'll just hit ask. It'll be like, what are they telling me to do? Like, how does this actually work? And it'll be able to like, Give me a, obviously it's like there's a transcript that it's working off of and it will give me information.

So I think that is, as on the consumer level, that's also great. I should also say this is a great time for me to plug it. Folks, we're not always great with putting the timestamps. Great way to do this is ask, ask for the timestamps of a video and you can see what's coming. And then if you have a specific interest, like let's say you're on a big technology video and you really only want to know if we talk about quantum.

I don't know why it's not a typical topic for us, but you can just go into ask and be like, does this video have any quantum in it? And then you can go to the timestamp. Yeah, those are all great examples. And obviously, you clearly are a heavy user of it. I'm an ask junkie. Yeah, I use it a lot too. And actually, I have found myself using it in use cases that I wouldn't have expected, honestly.

You gave some very clear examples of your running journey, how it helps you with that and makes you a better runner.

I'll use it even in kind of entertainment type situations. So for example, I have two young daughters. If I'm listening to a music video with them, I can ask about sort of

the inspiration of the lyrics or what did she mean actually by this very specific thing? And it's just kind of a super fun use case that allows me to enjoy the music, of course, and the music video, but actually go a little bit deeper with the artist. And in that sense, it's kind of like this very kind of organic, sort of very natural way of engaging with YouTube.

Like, it brings me and my daughters, in this case, closer to that particular artist. But back to your core question of how it came about and how that partnership works. That is a very classic example of daily, almost sort of blended teams across YouTube and Google DeepMind. Because it is powered by Gemini. And of course, you can get a sense of that in the experience.

But what we... what we did in the youtube context specifically is really make it about that video that you're engaging in and the reason i point that out is it's like a way to bring it to to deliver something for you as a viewer or consumer but to bring the creator into the fold too and i think that that's what makes that experience sort of unique to youtube which is like it is about the video it's about what the creator is saying in that video and You're describing an example where, you know, sometimes you want to get to the point around a particular thing, but there are many, many other examples which are going deeper about a particular concept in that video.

or jumping around, right? Like those types of things. And so we wanted to create something that worked really well for our viewers and listeners, watchers, users, but also for our creators. And that ask experience is a version of that. And you should expect us to continue to innovate on that

experience. One example being, what we announced at um io now i think a couple months ago which is to bring that similar type of conversational experience video forward creator forward conversational experience to the search experience on youtube as well so i'm very excited about that i don't know if you played around with that that's launching today right uh well we've had a version on youtube we've had a version available um on desktop we want to bring it to other surfaces including including you know, the biggest screen in your home.

Whereas you said lots and lots of people watch YouTube. And there, of course, you have the challenge of voice activation and things like that. But you can imagine what you can now do through that experience, which is like,

YouTube, can you help me plan my you know, trip with my wife to Paris, right? And it's a list of videos, but maybe it's more than a list of videos. Maybe it's specific points in the videos. Maybe it is some text describing sort of how to set up an itinerary step by step. So like a much richer type of an experience, just like you're familiar with Ask on the watch page.

So, you know, as you can tell, I'm getting very excited about this. But this is an example of close collaboration between DeepMind and Gemini. and YouTube to deliver a really big win for billions of viewers who come to YouTube every single day. Yeah, so as I said, there's lots of like, it's so much valuable information is baked within YouTube.

And so if you are going into search and you're asking for

like specific advice or help with a trip and it can effectively print it out by running across a bunch of different videos, That's pretty cool, giving you a link in. The creators that make those videos, they didn't make them thinking through the AI era. I would imagine that if you make a video, you kind of want people to be able to find the information that you've you know embedded in your video you're going to want people to come in and watch it so how does that change the creator equation where like a creator might be like well I made this like 15 minute video with a lot of production value where I talk through you know how to run a marathon and now somebody's in search

and they can get all everything that I shared you know just you know presented them in text where I don't get a view on my video What we have found, so there's a lot to that question. The first thing that I would say is that the ask experience um, is video forward, it's creator forward. So it isn't, um, it will surface those videos. And as you know, one of the things that's unique about YouTube that YouTube can bring to this experience is video.

And it turns out that a lot of learning like you're running examples being really good ones is text is okay, but you kind of have to watch the video or actually engage in parts of the video to really understand deeply what, the concept is or what have you, right? Like, you know, how to fix a garage door, that's a video kind of step-by-step type of an experience.

And only that kind of ask YouTube type experience can bring that to the fore. And so that's what we're seeing. And that's why I think, generally speaking, you don't see an impact on sort of the consumption of those those videos as of yet. Obviously, this is all new. The other thing, of course, to keep in mind is that in the grand scheme of engagement with YouTube, this is sort of a sliver of that, right? Lots of YouTube is about, you know, watching, you know, your favorite documentary on a television screen.

And that's the experience, right? So taking all those. And then the third thing I would say is that these new experiences I feel are going to be ways to surface up fresh pieces of content or content that might not have gotten a lot of views because it actually has, you know, out of a 10 minute video, this two minutes of gold that are really getting at the essence of this very, very esoteric query that you might have asked in Ask YouTube that previously wasn't being surfaced in the right way.

And that I would argue is a win, of course, for that creator, but also a win for you as a viewer or a person who's trying to learn something. um on youtube yeah okay let's see if we can lightning around we have like 10 minutes left so lightning around through a bunch of like other maybe business but non-ai questions okay uh nfl sunday ticket uh how do you prevent all these blackouts i signed up uh you know to get some games but because i live in new york couldn't watch the jets seems like an issue Because you're asking, presumably, because that Jets game was a national game.

Well, you know, the way it... Maybe YouTube was doing me a favor by blocking the game for me.

Jets, there's always hope, right? One and one. That's a good start.

What I would say is, you know, we follow the rules that basically Sunday Ticket is a an out of home package. That's the way it's designed. So if it is in your home market and it's the Jets, they're going to be available through your kind of your whoever your broadcast partner is or what have you. Or the game might be a national game, right? In which case it's also available.

outside of Sunday Ticket, but available to you. So it really is a out-of-home package, whether you're away from who your favorite team is or you're just interested in a different set of teams. And that has been the

core value proposition of Sunday Ticket. We're on season four now.

Every year we try to bring some innovation to it that sort of expands the market a little bit. innovates in terms of how we bring creators, for example, to the table. And so we're doing that, but that's kind of the long answer to your Jets question. So it's a lead question. i mean it's certainly a league question but it's also one fix that it's also one of just kind of um national versus local and the fact that sunday ticket is this out of home package out of market package uh when it comes to live content something that netflix is really going big into just trying to do more live um how much of that do you want to pro do you want to program yourself or do you want to

like buy it or license it or make it available I think the interesting thing about live content and live sports in particular, at least sort of how I think about it, is

the nice thing about live is it programs itself, right? Like we have a partnership with the NFL. It's a deep partnership. They have been great partners on this Sunday ticket journey.

But the nice thing about it is the games, you know, we don't script the games. We don't quote unquote pick the games. the game script themselves, right? So in that sense, it's like more akin to what you would sort of expect to see on YouTube. When we have, Coachella is the same way, right? Like this live, three day times two weekends long live stream that happens.

But, you know, we're not deciding what Justin Bieber does on stage or Sabrina Carpenter does on stage. They decide, right? Like they're the creators on the stage. And so that's how I think about live. Live has always been a very important part of YouTube, right? as you know, like some of our OG creators, we're gaming creators. A lot of what they do is livestream, right? And so live has always been this kind of core aspect of YouTube.

And that's how I think about live events, at least in terms of their home on YouTube. And we're doing actually, even this week, a lot of the new products that we're announcing are actually around live streaming, right? Like being able to bring, speaking of AI earlier, auto dubbing, right? One of the killer AI features on YouTube, right? Like to the live environment and expanding live streamers audiences that way.

So that's generally sort of how I think about live. Netflix is trying to take successful YouTube podcasts and use them as a growth engine. And I think prohibit the creators who run their podcasts on Netflix from running them on YouTube. I think if you're a creator doing that, that's probably a bad choice. How do you think about that from a competitive standpoint where you're going to lose some of your top creators and your competitors will put like exclusivity requirements in front of them? Yeah, I mean, I think generally speaking, when I speak with creators and by the way, this is not new.

This has existed for some time, which is Creators, if a creator finds success off of YouTube because of their success on YouTube, I think that's a really positive thing. You know, Mr. Beast, we were speaking about Jimmy earlier. He is, of course, an enormously successful YouTuber. Look at the amount of effort and creativity he puts into every single one of his videos every week.

But he has had enormous success outside of YouTube. um a game show a book um on and on and on and i think that's valuable because you know when you go to his offices one of his first rules is youtube first like he recognizes that youtube is his home and the font of all of that success and i think generally speaking when i speak with creators that's the conversation i have now of course given all of this the cultural phenomenon that YouTube creators are and this sort of juggernaut that they are in the culture out there.

Of course, other streaming platform services have taken note. And frankly, I think that's flattering to our creators. Right. And by the way, this is not the first time this has happened. I've been at YouTube long enough to know that there are other platforms and services that have sort of made a run at this

over the years. periodically and our job is to make sure that our creators feel like their primary home is YouTube and that's how we engage with them. And all of these conversations are actually pretty bespoke because what every creator is looking for in their business is slightly different. You think about your business differently than, you know, XYZ podcaster or XYZ YouTuber.

And it's my job and my team's job to listen to that and actually create something for you that feels like we're listening to you on YouTube, whether it's a feature, whether it's, you know, helping you with, you know, brand deals or what have you, right? That's another area that I'm very excited about is connecting creators and brands together.

So that's sort of how we think about it. Yeah, we've been piloting that. It's a good program. All right, two more. There's been a recent change on the way that YouTube counts views. now i don't fully understand it but all i can tell you is it seems like there's some serious great inflation going on on youtube where like the videos that that i'm producing are i i my estimate is like 30 or 40 percent more views uh than there than they were previously um what's the thinking behind this and should we start like having that context in mind when looking at view accounts on youtube Yeah.

You know, one of my, one of the kind of favorite parts about my job at YouTube is anytime we tweak a feature or functionality, like the feedback is instantaneously instantaneous and I appreciate it good and bad. And that happens.

has happened for years. And the answer on this one is very simple, Alex, which is we have gone

from where we started years ago when that original definition of the view was created to one where we are multi-surface, multi-format. Like I said, everything from these live streams to traditional VOD videos, long-form videos to, you know, shorts. We...

counted shorts until very recently in a way that was different than what we counted VODs. And I think that you could argue that that wasn't right either, right? Like why, just because this is over a certain time length or done horizontally or it would have a different view count to it, public view count to it than what we did on shorts. And so we just tried to make those things uniform so that they are counted in exactly the same way.

We had made that change to shorts a couple of years ago or a year ago, I can't remember exactly when, but Now we want to just be consistent across all of YouTube, and that's all we did. By the way, for creators, as you know, when you go into studio, you still see engaged views, right? So you still have that sort of calibration of how you may have thought about a view before.

And by the way, that's also how our systems work in terms of...

factoring views into, you know, recommendations and those types of things. And so it was really just more about uniformity and sort of simplicity in the product that we did that. And so I I view it more as like a clarification as opposed to anything that changed. And both those views are still available to two creators. Okay, great. We have like two minutes left, so this is what I'll close with.

for those of us on the outside it seems like there there might be like two futures of google emerging there's the media ad side which you come out of and which you're currently you know in within youtube and there's kind of like this cloud side um you know uh when you think about the future of google um Can those two exist together? And when, yeah, where is the, which one do you think will be the primary Google of the future? Oh, I mean, I think that that's,

at least in my mind, pretty clear, which is, you know, and I've been at Google a very long time. It's been a real privilege to see all these aspects of Google. And what's amazing about the company is all of these pieces can be, successful within Google. So obviously our cloud business, our core businesses, search and ads, and then of course, YouTube.

And the way that I describe YouTube is actually a little bit different than the way you talked about it, which is at its core, it is a technology company. Like I said, we pride ourselves in our deep product innovation. That's what YouTube is all about, right? We've had over 3,000 launches this year in terms of bringing the best of technology to this experience.

And I think that is the common core of Google in everything that we do. You described, for example, how Gemini works with every facet of Google and bringing AI to bear across all of these products. That's one facet, but So much of what YouTube does sits on that sort of incredibly deep Google technology stack that allows us to actually build all these amazing features for our creators and viewers and brands.

And I don't expect that to change. If anything, only it'll accelerate over the years to come alongside the hopeful continued growth of our cloud businesses or whatever other new

products and businesses we bring to our users. Well, Neil, dynamic times indeed. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, Alex. All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening and watching. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Every day as a small business owner feels like solving a puzzle.

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