YouTube is testing an AI chatbot that helps you customize your home feed to better match your video preferences.
Watch only what you want
The videos you see on your YouTube home feed are highly dependent on what the YouTube algorithm thinks will interest you. The algorithm constantly monitors your viewing habits, the content you’ve liked or disliked in the past, and the types of YouTube channels you follow to build your personalized feed. While this approach seems practical on paper, it can also mess up your feed quite easily.
Interact with a couple of Marvel videos, and the YouTube algorithm will think you’re a die-hard Marvel fan. As a result, your home feed will instantly get filled with Marvel-related videos. YouTube now seems to be admitting that its algorithm sometimes fails to detect what you actually want to watch, and is experimenting with an AI chatbot that lets you specify the type of content you want to see.
We’re experimenting with a new feature called “Your custom feed,” that lets you customize recommendations for your Home feed. If you are part of the experiment, you will see “Your Custom Feed” appear on your Home page as a chip besides “Home”. When you click into it, you can update your existing Home feed recommendations by entering a simple prompt. This feature is designed to give you an easy-to-use way to have more control over your suggested content. If you see it, check it out and share your feedback!
You can access the AI chatbot by tapping the new “Your Custom Feed” chip that appears next to the Home option on your YouTube main page. Then, enter a prompt describing the type of videos you want to see on your home feed. For example, you can type a prompt like “I want to see more WWE videos.” Your current YouTube home feed will be reset, and you’ll start seeing more WWE videos on it.
Since the feature is still in its experimental phase, not everyone may see the “Your Custom Feed” option. Unfortunately, the option hasn’t appeared for me on any of my four YouTube accounts, even though two of them are YouTube Premium accounts.
AI is slowly becoming the new tool for customizing feeds
“Home feed of YouTube app. | Image by PhoneArena
Interestingly, YouTube isn’t the only platform implementing AI to help users build their custom feed. X owner Elon Musk recently announced that users will soon be able to adjust their X feed simply by asking the platform’s built-in AI chatbot, Grok.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced last month that the platform is testing a way to train its algorithm by adding or removing topics of interest. Whether it’s through a built-in chatbot or by manually selecting topics, platforms are finally taking a positive step toward giving users more control over what they actually want to watch. This is definitely better than relying on the platform’s algorithm to decide what it thinks you want to see.
That said, it’s also worth noting how big companies like Google are integrating AI tools into their products. No doubt, an AI chatbot on YouTube will help you better manage your home feed. However, the flip side is that Google will most likely use the information you share with the chatbot to train its models, like Gemini. In the end, you’ll eventually become a source for Google to train its AI systems without even realizing it.
There will also be a group of people who wouldn’t like any kind of AI interference in their YouTube feed. That’s why I really hope that if the feature becomes publicly available, Google also gives users the option to completely disable it for those who don’t want AI to learn what kind of content they like to watch on YouTube.
YouTube has been going through a lot of changes recently
While the AI-based home feed customization feature is still in the experimental phase, YouTube has already taken several interesting steps to give users more control over their feed. Over the past few years, YouTube has been prompting users with a “Customize Your Feed” option that occasionally appears on the home feed. When you tap on the prompt, you’re asked to select the types of videos you like, which ultimately helps the YouTube algorithm better understand your preferences.
YouTube also constantly asks whether you like a particular post or video on the platform to determine if it should show you more similar content in your feed. Last year, YouTube Premium subscribers also got the option to customize their feed based on color, but it was removed after a few days and hasn’t been made available since.
Furthermore, YouTube recently announced that it is adding a new button to let you remove pop-ups like “subscribe to the channel” or “watch another video” that appear at the end of a video. All these innovations definitely hint that YouTube wants to keep refining the user experience on its platform.
