YouTube will let you ask AI to make a custom video feed

Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.YouTube is launching a new AI feature that creates a personalized video feed based on descriptions of what you want to watch. In its announcement, YouTube says custom content feeds can be built around your specific interests, moods, or favorite topics, which you can then pin to the top of your YouTube homepage — making it easy to jump back into the feed.This feature is currently rolling out with English language support to YouTube users in the US who are signed-in on the YouTube mobile app or desktop. To access it, click on the “Your custom feed” tab at the top of the YouTube homepage and enter a prompt description into the AI text box. For example, you can ask the YouTube AI to “help me unwind with guided meditations under 10 minutes,” or for “deep-dive tech podcasts about AI,” and then receive a curated feed based on your request.It’s similar to other AI-powered feed customization features we’ve seen from other platforms, including Spotify’s prompted playlists. Instagram also gave users more control over their Reels feed algorithm in December, though that uses topic lists rather than descriptive prompts.YouTube says that prompts can be edited at any time to “generate a brand new space” by selecting the text box at the top of your custom feed. To see the “Your custom feed” tab, YouTube says you need to ensure your search and watch history are enabled in your account settings. If the AI messes up your feed request, you can also report the issue to YouTube by clicking the 3-dot menu on the feature tab and selecting “Something wrong?” to leave feedback.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jess Weatherbed