Since the pandemic has dawned on us, most of our quality time is spent on social media, especially YouTube. We enjoy good fun videos with a cup of coffee and drop funny comments. Interestingly, related videos will start showing up on our feeds and we grow more into the media. We comment on several videos and the chances of being noticed by the creator are minimal.
Content creators might often be busy creating suitable content that will entertain their viewers and invite prospective subscribers as well. They wish to keep their channel as interesting and interactive as possible. However, it is not possible to reply to all the comments they receive, especially if it is a growing channel. Thanks to this new feature introduced by YouTube called ‘Smart Replies’. What is it, you might ask? A Google AI-enabled feature designed to help users reply without actually typing. This saves time and disappointments!!
The work of ‘Smart Reply’ is that it analyses the comments and generate a suitable reply for it. For example, a viewer comments “Great Video. Loved it.” The AI will automatically start to generate replies to the comment like, “Thank you”, “Appreciate it, don’t forget to sub”, “Glad you liked it” etc. The user selects the reply and sends it without having to take the effort to actually write a reply. The technology already exists in Gmail and Android’s Messages App and open to developers who want to integrate it with their app.
Unlike Google’s smart reply, the YouTube algorithm supports multiple languages. For the time being it enables English and Spanish, but YouTube plans to add more languages. Apart from verbal comments, the AI has the capability to generate replies for emoji comments. Google researchers explained they had to come up with a whole new language-processing model to accommodate for the common usage of emoji on YouTube.
Collaborating the technology with YouTube posed a great challenge to Google as it is a wider platform that serves videos related to various topics and from different regions/areas. This meant the comments under the videos wouldn’t necessarily contain the formal language used in emails, instead contain certain slangs, abbreviations, inconsistent punctuations, and higher usage of emojis. The AI must be fed algorithm that can reply to these types of messages. The process was lengthy and tiring but worth the effort.
As with other Smart Reply messages, the YouTube replies will still be chosen by a human, who will pick from different options presented by the software. The technology will not post messages itself – but will have written them.
Google is planning to extend its Smart compose feature to applications such as Telegram and Whatsapp. So, if you want to send messages without typing and delegate the task to a robot, then viola! Google has taken up the task for you.
