# YouTube AI Strategy: Custom Feeds and Short Series

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-09-24

## Transcript

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Another year, another Made on YouTube event.
Let's talk about what happened, shall we?
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Daily Crunch for Thursday starts right now.
Now, in case you missed it, on Wednesday, YouTube held its annual Made on YouTube event.
As we take a look at the big announcements, you'll notice most of the company's updates involve, surprise, surprise, AI.
First, YouTube says it's going to let you build your own algorithm.
Well, kind of.
The company announced a new feature called Custom Feeds that allows you to describe, in your own words, the kinds of videos you'd like YouTube to recommend to you.
To create one, you type a description of what you want the feed to be about into a prompt box on YouTube, whether that's a feed dedicated to a particular interest or one that serves some other purpose.
For instance, YouTube suggests you could build a feed of video podcasts to watch during your 30-minute train commute, or you could request videos for a particular mood, like relaxing commentary videos to unwind with.
The prompt-based feature leverages Google's Gemini AI model to build the feed around your request, and the resulting feed is then pinned to the top of your YouTube homepage in its own tab.
Because the feed's creation is AI-powered, the request can be described in lengthy terms as you share detailed information about how you want to curate the feed, what it should feature or exclude, what content to prioritize, and a whole bunch more.
The addition follows similar moves by a number of other social networks that have created tools that essentially allow users to build their own algorithms by describing what they want their feed to include and how to present that information to them.
YouTube believes custom feeds will help users to better explore the vast number of videos now hosted on its platform.
And in other AI news from YouTube, Ask YouTube.
The video site's newer AI-powered conversational search feature will become a shopping companion.
The company also announced on Wednesday, the feature allows anyone to search YouTube using natural language requests, including with queries that are more complex and detailed than in traditional search.
In a bid to help creators reach more people, YouTube also unveiled a slew of new tools, many of which use AI to try out different tactics on videos to find what makes them perform best.
The new Ask Studio feature allows creators to share draft videos with AI to get personalized feedback based on their previous content and user comments.
The feature will propose alternative titles and thumbnail options, analyze the creator's channel analytics to explain the performance of their videos, and offer advice for improving...
metrics.
Ask Studios expanding to YouTube's mobile apps too.
Now YouTube already allows creators to A-B test titles and thumbnails, and from 2027 this feature will let creators upload and test three different cuts for shorts.
There's also a dynamic thumbnails feature with which creators can upload multiple thumbnails and leave it to YouTube to determine which thumbnail to show viewers that is most likely to spark their interest.
The company's also launching a live showdown feature, which lets creators co-host streams together and even get paired with other creators currently streaming through live creator matchmaking.
YouTube's also adding new AI-powered features to YouTube Music that aim to make it easier for listeners to discover music, explore artists, and and find podcasts that they may otherwise miss.
The updates include Ask Music, a conversational tool for music and podcasts, and Your Podcast Lineup, a personalized audio guide designed to help listeners discover new shows.
Built directly into the YouTube Music app, Ask Music lets users describe what they want to hear in everyday language rather than searching for individual songs or artists.
Users can use it to build custom listening cues, explore an artist's motivations, or dig deeper into music history.
YouTube explains that instead of manually searching, the user simply types the request as if they were asking a friend.
And as micro-drama apps gain traction, YouTube's clearly betting that episodic short-form storytelling is gonna stick around.
And that the format belongs on shorts, naturally.
Also, at Made on YouTube, the company announced Short Series, a new tool that lets creators organize their shorts into TV-style seasons and episodes.
The future brings a more traditional episodic structure to YouTube Shorts, complete with custom thumbnails and playback.
With short series, viewers can watch a selection of shorts as a continuous story rather than simply scrolling from one standalone clip to the next.
The series will live on a creator's YouTube channel.
The feature is rolling out to creators in the YouTube Partner Program across web, mobile, and connected TVs.
The move comes as no surprise given that YouTubers have already been experimenting with micro-dramas and increasingly, they're considering it a serious business venture.
The formats even become popular enough to attract recognizable Hollywood names too, with celebrities including James Franco, Issa Rae, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson getting involved.
Now this new feature also puts the platform more directly into competition with a growing collection of microdrama apps.
TikTok recently launched Pine Drama, its own microdrama app, while others such as Real Short and Drama Box have also grown in popularity.
For YouTube, Short Series could be a way to keep viewers engaged without sending them off to other platforms for episodic vertical storytelling.
Instead, they're providing a way to access it all directly on YouTube.
The company adds that Short Series builds on creator shows, which it announced at its annual Upfront event last year.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Lauren Forrestal, Amanda Silberling, Sarah Perez, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow, same Tech Time, same Crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.