YouTube Upgrades AI Conversational Search to Boost Video Shopping Scenarios

According to foreign media reports, YouTube announced at its Made On YouTube event that its AI-driven conversational search feature, Ask YouTube, will add shopping assistance capabilities, further expanding its presence in the video shopping sector. Ask YouTube initially launched as a conversational search experiment and has since gradually integrated into the broader YouTube platform experience. The feature allows users to make queries in natural language, handling requests far more complex and nuanced than traditional searches. The platform integrates both Shorts and long-form video content to generate result sets, covering diverse scenarios such as step-by-step travel planning, guidance for learning new skills, and recommendations for specific topic series. With this upgrade, when users search for specific products, they receive structured recommendations, including comparison tables of product attributes and categories tailored to user preferences. Users can also ask follow-up questions directly on the viewing page of corresponding videos. This functional adjustment is driven by user behavior trends already observed on the platform. Currently, platform users commonly rely on creator content to learn about different products, showing high receptivity to creators' opinions and recommendations. Official disclosed data shows that in June this year alone, over 140 million users used Ask YouTube to deeply explore video content, a rise of more than 500% compared to December last year. Supporting the rapid growth of this feature's user base is a customized Gemini model. Emily Moxley, Vice President of AI Product Management for YouTube Audience, mentioned in a pre-event media briefing that this model can precisely match complex user questions to specific second-level moments in videos where answers are provided, transforming passive searches into immediate and effective connections between users, videos, and creators. This article was first published on the official website of Ebrun.