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topicnews · August 28, 2024

Skip YouTube ads and even the entire video by letting Gemini summarize it for you

Skip YouTube ads and even the entire video by letting Gemini summarize it for you

Google’s Gemini seems to be improving rapidly, so much so that Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman even said Apple’s intelligence was underwhelming compared to Gemini. And Google is determined to integrate its AI into every app imaginable. Gemini now recognizes and works with YouTube too.

There are actually two really cool Gemini features that are apparently rolling out simultaneously to the Gemini and Google app betas. One is the “Questions about this screen” feature and the other is “Questions about this video.” The former was introduced at Google I/O this year, where the company also showed off Project Astra. “Questions about this video” is basically the same thing, but works for videos on YouTube.

There are use cases for both, so let’s talk about them in a little more detail.

Ask Gemini about your screen

Gemini is smart enough to understand what’s happening on your screen, something Apple Intelligence is supposedly capable of as well. You don’t have to stick to that one sentence either. That is, you don’t have to explicitly say, “Gemini, what’s on my screen?” Instead, there’s a helpful button that prompts the AI ​​to receive queries about what’s currently being displayed. As with all modern LLM (Large language model) AIs, Gemini lets you have a conversation in a completely natural way. Are you on a web page with a very long article? Call up Gemini and tell it to give you a summary. Have you opened an image and don’t know what to do with it? Our AI friend can probably help.

The idea behind it is that Gemini should always be on hand and can help you with anything that leaves you perplexed.

Ask Gemini to summarize a YouTube video

This feature is only slightly modified when used in the YouTube app. The “Questions about this screen” button now says “Questions about this video” and there is also a small YouTube icon to let you know that you want to ask Gemini a question about this video.

The funny thing is that Gemini uses the subtitles of a YouTube video to generate its answers, so if you don’t play the video or even the previous ad, you can still get Gemini to answer questions about the video.

I doubt this exploit will be around for too long. Gemini will either prompt you to finish watching the ad or “helpfully” suggest you subscribe to YouTube Premium. But hey, let’s enjoy it while it’s here.

As I mentioned above, Google is determined to integrate Gemini into everything. I personally have no problem with this, but I am glad that most AI tools can be turned off in case a user doesn’t want them. AI is in:

And these are just Google’s services. Many other platforms are also integrating their own AI into their apps. It seems that soon there won’t be a single device that isn’t powered by AI. Of course, Google doesn’t want to be left behind in this AI race.

However, AI has now reached places where it no longer seems so useful (When I look around, countless emails about AI products), there is no denying that many services will benefit from their integration. And since almost every service that integrates AI also uses on-device AI, Google seems to be pretty well prepared for the coming AI era.

No wonder the Pixels are some of the best phones you can buy today.