YouTube Is Testing The Automatic Addition Of Chapters To Certain Videos

YouTube recently introduced a myriad of changes, providing users with a revamped user interface, playback controls, shorts, and more. One of the new features, launched at the start of the year, is called “video chapters”. It allows the creator to divide their video into chapters (sections) to make it easier for viewers to jump to the section they are more likely to watch.

I love the chapters. They save me from having to watch the boring games or jerkily tweak the search bar to get to the interesting part. However, Chapters can only be added by Creators, so you are basically at their mercy for enjoying this little gift. However, this addiction may soon end, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).

Indeed, this function currently requires that the creators mention the timestamp of each chapter in the description box of their video. It’s a bit tedious, and YouTube is now looking to make this process easier by using its AI tools.

Thanks to an official support page, YouTube reveals that it has started testing the automatic addition of video chapters using machine learning. This means that creators will no longer need to add timestamps to the description. YouTube will do all the work for them. It will also increase the chances of your video showing up in Google search, as the company now shows users which video chapters have the necessary information.

If widely available on the platform, it could be a boon to all creators and save a lot of time, which can be used to improve content. How will the machine learning algorithm automatically generate the video chapters you request?

YouTube chapters are very practical

YouTube explains that its machine learning algorithm will “recognize text in order to auto-generate video chapters.  ”This means that if you have clearly demarcated where you start talking about a particular topic using title slides or some other means, then YouTube will be able to automatically enable chapter support video. Take the example of a smartphone test video, where the creator adds images with prominent text, like “design”, “camera”, etc. to go to the next part of the test. Thanks to this new experience, YouTube wants to make it easier to navigate through the videos and allow you to quickly jump to the relevant part by taking advantage of the chapters.

This AI-generated “video chapters” feature is currently available for some videos. The company doesn’t specify what type of videos or creators it activates this feature for, but it will be interesting to see how precisely it works.