YouTube has recently introduced a myriad of changes, offering users a revamped UI, playback controls, Shorts, and more. One of the new features, launched earlier this year, is called video chapters. It enables the creator to divide their video into chapters (sections) to make it easier for viewers to jump to the section they’re more inclined to watch. This feature currently needs creators to mention timestamps for each chapter down in the description box. This is a bit of a hassle and YouTube is now looking to ease this process by bringing its AI tools into play.
Through an official support page, YouTube reveals that it has started testing the addition of video chapters automatically using machine learning. This means creators will no longer need to add timestamps to the description. YouTube will be doing all the heavy lifting for them. This will also increase the chances of your video appearing in Google Search as the company now also points users to video chapters with the necessary info.
If available broadly across the platform, it could be a boon for all creators and save a lot of time, which can be used to improve your content. How is the machine learning algorithm going to auto-generate video chapters you ask?
YouTube explains that its machine learning algorithm will “recognize text in order to auto-generate video chapters.” This means if you clearly demarcated where you start talking about what topic via title slides or lower-thirds, then YouTube will be able to automatically enable video chapters support.
This AI-generated ‘video chapters’ feature is currently available for select videos. The company does not specify what kind of videos or creators it is enabling this feature for, however, it will be interesting to see how accurately it works. If you have received this feature, do share your experience with us in the comments below.
