iWorld
YouTube announces new generative AI products
Mumbai: At Made On YouTube, the platform unveiled a suite of AI-powered capabilities that will help both new and established creators and artists create, edit, and share content in bold new ways. These AI-powered tools will help unlock powerful new forms of creative expression, take the friction out of the creative process, and allow YouTube creators to reach more viewers.
Showcasing the limitless potential AI can bring to creators, artists and the creative industry, the key announcements include:
· The introduction of Dream Screen, a new generative AI feature to unlock creative expression on Shorts: Later this year, YouTube will introduce Dream Screen, a new experimental feature that allows creators to add AI-generated video or image backgrounds to their Shorts simply by typing an idea into a prompt. With Dream Screen, creators will be able to generate new, fantastic settings for their Shorts that are only limited by bounds of their imagination.
o Since launching Shorts in 2020, Shorts has now climbed to over 70B daily views from over 2B logged-in users every month.
· The launch of YouTube Create to help take the work out of video production: To help anyone to create and share videos right to YouTube, the platform has launched a new mobile app called YouTube Create, which was designed to empower creators to get started with a suite of production tools to edit their Shorts, longer videos, or both.
o The app offers video editing tools including precision editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters, effects, transitions and royalty-free music with beat matching technology so that creators can produce their next YouTube video without relying on complex editing software.
o YouTube has consulted with more than 3k creators in the process of building YouTube Create.
o Currently in beta on Android in select markets including the United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Indonesia, India, Korea, and Singapore, YouTube Create is free of charge.
Here are more ways that YouTube is helping take the heavy lifting off creators and giving them more efficient tools to help them come up with new ideas and reach new audiences.
· YouTube is bringing Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing tool, into YouTube so creators easily reach audiences well beyond their primary language.
o Available to select creators, the feature is currently being tested in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
· Next year, assistive search in Creator Music will make it easier for creators to find a soundtrack for their video. Creators can simply type in a search query and AI will suggest the right music at the right place.
o Creator Music is currently available in the US, and we look forward to expanding as quickly as possible.
· Next year, YouTube Studio will tap generative AI to spark video ideas and draft outlines to help creators brainstorm. These insights are personalized for each channel and based on what audiences are already watching and interested in.
o YouTube has been testing early versions of AI-powered tools in YouTube Studio with creators, and more than 70 percent of those surveyed said it’s helped them develop and test ideas for videos.
YouTube chief executive officer Neal Mohan said, “We shared new updates that will help creators and artists push the boundaries of creative expression — by making the difficult things simple and impossible dreams possible. Making it easier for creators anywhere to create content they love is core to YouTube’s commitment to putting creative power into the hands of billions of people. This is the start of a new era of creativity. We can’t wait to see what our incredible community of creators and artists make on YouTube.”
YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen said, “Bold and responsible, that is our mission. The potential of AI is incredibly exciting. But as with any new technology, we have to approach it responsibly. What Artists, Songwriters, and Producers do is something that is uniquely human, that cannot be replaced by technology. We see AI as a tool that can be used by artists to amplify and accelerate their creativity. And we are committed to working alongside the creative community within our AI Music Incubator, which has now expanded globally. We are also leaning into our superpower – our deep partnerships with the music industry – working back-to-back with them to achieve our collective goals of fueling creativity and driving business forward.”
These creators and artists are using YouTube to drive forward the future of creative expression and explain how the announcements shared will impact the broader ecosystem:
· YouTube creator, Alan Chikin Chow said, “It’s really great to see a dedicated Create app because it gives creators the confidence that whatever we make on YouTube Create will be optimized for the platform. An app like this will open the door for more people and make becoming a YouTuber that much more accessible.”
· YouTube creator, Jade Beason said, “I am all about efficiency. I’m really excited about the AI-powered insights because it’s taking what I already do – scouring the internet, looking at Google Trends, taking my viewers’ suggestions – and quickly giving me ideas for videos to get inspired to make and put my own spin on.”
· YouTube creator, Cleo Abram said, “AI tools can help us shrink the gap between what we imagine and what we can make, instead of shrinking our ideas. And because they help us shrink that gap, these tools can increase access to the conversation.”
· Artist, songwriter and producer, Charlie Puth said, “I’m thrilled to be a part of YouTube’s AI Music Incubator. GenAI technology is a powerful tool, and I’m grateful YouTube is collaborating with artists while developing their technology to ensure it ultimately accelerates creativity instead of replacing it.”
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
