YouTube Tests AI-Powered Comment Reply Suggestions

I don’t know, this seems unnecessary.

Today, YouTube has announced that it’s launching a live test of a new process that will provide AI-powered reply suggestions to help creators engage with fans in the app.

As explained by YouTube:

“To make it easier for creators to engage with their viewers via comments, we’re experimenting with updated, AI-enhanced comment reply suggestions that give creators editable suggestions in their own tone and style. If you’re a creator in the experiment, you’ll start to see these suggestions appear in the Comments tab or Community tab in Studio (depending on which Studio experience you have) and on the YouTube mobile app.”

So these AI-generated reply suggestions will be in your “tone and style,” with YouTube’s system learning from your previous engagements to give you ideas for how you should respond to vide comments.

Which is not much different from auto-complete suggestions in Gmail, I guess, and they can be helpful. But it does seem like the platforms are actively seeking ways to use generative AI to take the humanity out of online interactions, and providing suggestions on how you should talk to people feels like maybe a step too far, and an unnecessary use of the technology.

But it could also save time. If you’ve got a lot of followers, and you’re inspiring a lot of comments with your content, then maybe having auto-generated reply suggestions will help, and will make it easier to engage with your audience, and prompt more interaction.

I can see the benefits to it, but again, it feels like this is something that shouldn’t be automated, if possible, and that this shouldn’t be an area where you’re giving creators an easy option to post fake engagement.

I feel the same about Meta’s project that enables creators to build AI chatbots that respond in their style and voice. The whole value of social media is that it is social, and that you can engage with real people in these apps. The more we automate, the more of that we lose, and if it all just becomes bot responses to bot queries, people are only going to drift further into their own smaller chat groups and conversations.

Bots have always been an annoyance, from auto-replies to DMs to auto-engagement in-stream. They’re mostly obvious, and always a waste of space. Yet, now, the platforms are actively encouraging this type of engagement.

Because it’s harder to detect now that AI has improved? Because it saves time, and makes people feel seen?

I don’t know, I just don’t think that all of this needs to be automated, but I do also understand that the scale of work that some creators are dealing with could align with these tools.

Either way, YouTube’s comment reply suggestions will be just that, suggestions, and you’ll be able to edit them if you do choose to use them.    

YouTube says that the test is rolling out to a small group of creators at first, with a view to further expansion.