Google adds its ‘Smart Replies’ feature to YouTube Studio for content creators to be able to connect and engage with their audiences in a more efficient manner. This new update, posted on 1 July 2020, analyzes comments on YouTube videos and provides creators with responses that can be posted with just one tap.
This GIF from the Google AI Blog shows how the new update works:
The Smart Replies feature will also scan and study the content creators’ responses over time to develop replies that are more similar to the creators’ way of speaking and responding. This software has been available across numerous other Google platforms (e.g. Gmail) since 2017. Google even posted an explanation of the challenges they faced in creating a SmartReply system for YouTube creators.
According to Google, unlike emails, YouTube comments are varied in form and style. While emails tend to be more formal and extensive, YouTube comments tend to be short and peppered with various forms of speech such as slang words, emojis, and switches in the language used. Google developed a SmartReply system that would be able to address exactly those types of inconsistencies. The new feature will now be able to analyze them and develop responses that are in tune with such types of comments.
According to Google:
“Our goal is to help creators, so we have to make sure that SmartReply only makes suggestions when it is very likely to be useful. Ideally, suggestions would only be displayed when it is likely that the creator would reply to the comment and when the model has a high chance of providing a sensible and specific response. To accomplish this, we trained auxiliary models to identify which comments should trigger the SmartReply feature.”
The SmartReply function is currently only available for English and Spanish creators, but Google is developing a way to be able to cater to all languages and writing styles.
Implications for Marketers:
YouTube content creators are offered a more efficient means of communicating and engaging with their online community. This will help creators boost the engagement of their platform, as comments on videos are an important factor in increasing rankings. Being able to better respond to comments is a step towards amping up engagement. Marketers will then be afforded a new platform to promote a brand, as YouTube is becoming an increasingly effective platform to market products and services.
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