YouTube Music tests Spotify-like AI hosts for commentary: Check what's new

Google introduces experimental AI hosts in the YouTube Music app, offering stories related to the track playing, trivia, and AI-generated commentary to listening more engaging

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YouTube has announced that it is introducing AI-powered hosts to radio stations and mixes within the YouTube Music app. According to the company, these virtual hosts are not just there to play tracks but to add more depth to the listening experience with AI-generated commentary, stories related to the music track and more.

 

The feature is being introduced as part of a new experiment under the recently launched YouTube Labs program, and is currently limited to the US.

YouTube Music AI hosts

According to YouTube’s blog post, the hosts are designed to “deepen your listening experience by sharing relevant stories, fan trivia, and fun commentary about music.” Through this approach, YouTube aims to make music sessions more interactive and engaging by weaving in background insights and entertaining snippets alongside the songs. 

 

 

The development follows Spotify’s launch two years ago of its AI DJ, which offers curated playlists paired with AI-generated spoken commentary on songs and artists. Like Spotify, the AI hosts focus beyond just playing songs by offering additional context and interactive storytelling. They can share behind-the-scenes details, fun facts, and trivia related to the tracks for an engaging music experience.

 

This new testing is said to be aligned with Google’s broader AI initiatives. Earlier, Google integrated AI hosts into NotebookLM to assist with learning and studying. In NotebookLM, the “hosts” are AI personas that converse about users’ content, turning static text into engaging audio discussions.

 

What is YouTube Labs

 

The newly launched YouTube Labs is similar to Google Labs, Google’s experimental arm that lets users test early-stage AI products and provide feedback. By launching Labs, YouTube is highlighting its intent to make AI a more central part of how users interact with music and video. For now, only select users will get to try it. 

 

YouTube Premium: New features

 

Alongside the AI hosts experiment, YouTube has also expanded some of its Premium-only features. The jump ahead feature, which uses AI to skip directly to the most interesting part of a video, is now fully available on YouTube for TV and game consoles. This feature had already started appearing for some users earlier this year, but YouTube has now confirmed its wider rollout. There are other features like faster playback speeds (up to 4x), high-quality audio, and more.