YouTube Shorts joins AI race with new ‘Dream Screen’ feature. But how does it work?

YouTube on Thursday announced a new feature on its short-form video platform Shorts, called Dream Screen, which enables users to create unique videos using AI tools.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, during the company’s live event “Made on YouTube,” revealed that users can use the AI feature to create an AI-generated video or image in YouTube Shorts by simply typing in the desired background.

Mohan demonstrated how this works by typing in “a panda drinking coffee” to show how the video image appears on the screen.

The company offered further examples as well, such as underwater castles or things you could have dreamed about, like dragons or sci-fi moonrises.

Mohan expressed his belief that the technology will enable more people to publish on YouTube without feeling as though they need a whole production studio or a thorough understanding of YouTube analytics, TechCrunch reported.

Over 70 billion daily views are currently being averaged on the Shorts platform, up from 50 billion in January and the biggest video-creating app anticipates that these figures will rise even higher with AI.

“At YouTube, we want to make it easier for everyone to feel like they can create and we believe generative AI will make that possible,” said Mohan.

The feature is currently being presented to a small group of artists, and it will presumably then go live early next year.

According to YouTube, in the future, the tool will allow users to enter ideas for how to alter or remix their content in order to create entirely new and unique videos.