YouTube will let you build your own algorithm with AI

YouTube says it’s going to let you build your own algorithm — well, kind of. The company on Wednesday 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.”

Image Credits:YouTube

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 home page 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 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.

Decentralized social network Bluesky began popularizing this idea years ago as a way to differentiate its service from rivals like X. This year, it rolled out an AI tool, Attie, that makes feed-building even easier. Other services, including Meta’s Threads, Instagram, X, and more recently, Spotify, have also launched their own feed-building features, many of which are also AI-powered.

Image Credits:YouTube

YouTube believes custom feeds will help users to better explore the vast number of videos now hosted on its platform.

“One of the amazing things about being on YouTube is that the world is always at your fingertips,” noted Emily Moxley, VP of Product Management for Viewer AI, in a pre-brief with reporters ahead of the Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, where custom feeds were introduced to the public. “There’s over 20 billion videos in the YouTube corpus, so you’re always one search away from a treasure trove of topics.”

The new feeds, however, will not replace YouTube’s main feed, which features all your recommendations. Instead, you will now be able to easily hop right into whichever feed best suits your purposes when you open the YouTube app.

Support for creating multiple custom feeds will roll out across YouTube on web and mobile, starting next month, the company said.