YouTube announces expanded set of tools for creators in latest AI initiative

YouTube is introducing a series of AI-powered tools aimed at reducing creators' workloads.

At its annual Made On YouTube event, the video platform introduced a new AI "creative partner" called Ask Studio, which can provide personalized summaries of things like how a video is performing or what commenters are saying.

Our vision is for Ask Studio to become the ultimate creative partner for every Creator — a trusted companion that Creators turn to first," YouTube wrote in an announcement. "It will provide personalized and actionable strategic insights based on knowledge of you as a Creator, your channel, and how YouTube works.

The announcement comes as social media companies continue to aggressively lean into the AI boom, throwing AI agents and in-platform chatbots at users while integrating more AI-powered tools for creators.

Many creators have been experimenting with various AI tools for years, including ones rolled out by YouTube last year , to help them improve their videos.

But the Google-owned video platform came under fire earlier this year from a handful of creators who expressed concerns that YouTube was making subtle changes to their videos using AI without their permission or knowledge. In response, the platform said it would offer creators the ability to opt-out of the platform’s recent enhancements to some Shorts

On Tuesday, YouTube said it plans to offer creators an AI feature that will ideate potential future videos, coming up with a title, description and AI-generated thumbnail for each, along with a possible video hook and narrative outline. The company added that it will pull from past audience behavior to inform creators on specific reasons for its suggestions.

The company is also expanding on existing features such as automatic dubbing and deepfake detection.

In the coming months, YouTube announced, new lip sync technology should make dubbed languages better match creators' mouth movements. The feature is designed to localize YouTube's content across 20 languages, using AI instead of the human translators and voice actors that some creators traditionally relied on.

Meanwhile, YouTube's tool detecting unauthorized uses of creators' likenesses is now in an open beta for members of the YouTube Partner Program. First announced in December, this likeness detection tool is the platform's response to the growing prevalence of nonconsensual AI-generated deepfakes, often of celebrities or influencers promoting products, that have flooded the internet in recent years.

As for live streams on the platform, YouTube says its new AI-powered highlights will automatically find and clip the "most compelling" moments from each stream to turn into Shorts that creators can then share.

Other features announced Tuesday include expanded A/B testing options for newly uploaded videos and the option to add up to five collaborators to one video.

More AI tools are coming to content creation on the platform as well for YouTube Shorts.

Google's Veo 3 video generator, which will allow creators to turn text prompts into video Shorts, has begun its rollout, and the company is now experimenting with an AI video editor that "transforms your raw footage into a compelling first draft." The platform says it will also start testing a new speech-to-song tool that can remix dialogue into "catchy soundtracks."

This article was originally published on newsrealtime

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OpenAI reveals the biggest-ever study on how people are using ChatGPT - here are 3 things we've learned

• OpenAI has just revealed the largest ChatGPT usage survey in history.
• According to the findings, 70% of ChatGPT users use it outside of work.
• The survey was conducted by OpenAI's Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming

Open AI has just revealed the results of its largest ChatGPT usage study to date, and the insights into how people interact with the AI chatbot are fascinating.

Revealing the study on its blog , OpenAI broke down the results into three key takeaways: Who is using ChatGPT, what they are using it for, and how the use of AI is evolving over time.

The study was conducted by OpenAI's Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

While Future (the parent company of newsrealtime) has conducted its own research in the past that has provided great insight into the AI usage of the broader population , getting information directly from the creators of the world's most popular AI tool gives an excellent insight.

Here are three things we learned from the world's biggest study into ChatGPT and how people use it.

1. Usage gaps are closing

According to OpenAI, the gender gap among users who fully utilize ChatGPT has dramatically closed over the years. Previous research in January 2024 showed that of the users who had names that could be classified as masculine or feminine, 37% had "typically feminine names."

As of July 2025, however, that figure stands at 52%. Now, I have my doubts about how OpenAI can truly determine the gender of a user interacting with ChatGPT, but considering the massive influx with the same criteria, it's fair to say that there is far less of a gender gap related to AI than ever before.

Elsewhere, OpenAI reports that the adoption rate in the lowest-income countries is four times faster than that of the wealthiest.

2. How people use ChatGPT

According to OpenAI, the main reason people use ChatGPT is to get things done, and "three-quarters of conversations focus on practical guidance, seeking information, and writing."

OpenAI breaks down how people use ChatGPT into three categories: Asking, Doing, and Expressing. The study claims nearly half of all ChatGPT queries are "Asking" – where a user interacts with AI to get advice. 40% of usage is "Doing" such as "drafting text, planning, or programming," and 11% of usage is "Expressing", focused on "personal reflection, exploration, and play."

While this breakdown might not surprise you, I think it's interesting to see that writing is in fact the most common work task people use ChatGPT for. Honestly, that doesn't fill me with much hope, especially considering I spend hours and hours of my day writing without help from AI.

3. Mostly play, less work

This part of the study is the most intriguing, in my opinion. In fact, I'm actually pretty shocked at the results. OpenAI claims 70% of people use ChatGPT in a non-work related fashion, with the study stating "ChatGPT helps improve judgment and productivity."

Without this study, I'd have honestly believed most people use ChatGPT in a work-based environment, specifically for mundane tasks that don't require a lot of brain power. Instead, it looks users are interacting with ChatGPT after the office closes and in their spare time, highlighting just how much AI has managed to infiltrate our daily lives.

You can read the full paper with even more statistics on the NBER website . What result from this survey do you find the most interesting? Let us know in the comments below.

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Apple no longer innovates -- it waits. And with AI, anyone playing it safe will get left behind.

Apple's struggles represent a fundamental misreading of the AI revolution.

Apple sits in an unprecedented position: It's a company worth more than $3 trillion that's somehow missing the most transformative technological shift since the internet.

While rivals race ahead in artificial intelligence (AI), the iPhone maker is stuck in neutral, watching its market leadership erode with each passing quarter.

A solution might be on the way, but don't hold your breath. Apple is reportedly preparing an AI product blitz That would give a new shine to its device lineup — with robots that include a lifelike version of Siri, a smart speaker with a screen, a new operating system and major home security services.

But is Apple too late?

Skepticism runs deep about Apple's AI makeover after previous efforts with Siri, Apple Intelligence, and Apple Vision Pro largely fizzled. But a determined Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, insists the company "must win in AI" and restore its innovation edge, according to a Bloomberg report. And last week, Bloomberg reported that Apple is considering using Alphabet's Gemini. to create an AI-powered Siri program .

Meanwhile, stock investors are rewarding Apple's rivals — Nvidia Microsoft Alphabet and Meta Platforms — for their aggressive AI investments.

Apple continues to rely on stock buybacks as its primary growth strategy. It's a defensive playbook when the moment demands bold offensive moves.

Apple's struggles represent a fundamental misreading of the AI revolution. While competitors pour resources into large-language models, autonomous systems and AI-powered services, Apple continues to rely on stock buybacks — to the tune of $704 billion over the past decade — as its primary growth strategy. It's a defensive playbook when the moment demands bold offensive moves.

One such move, a pledge by the company to invest $600 billion into U.S. operations over the next four years, promises a boost in manufacturing. But will we ever see it done? Is it a legitimate strategy or one of the empty commitments Apple has been making for some time?

In the meantime, a talent exodus speaks volumes about Apple's internal dysfunction around AI. The company lost its fourth top AI researcher to Meta this year, joining a broader brain drain that should alarm both investors and customers. When your brightest minds are fleeing to competitors, it signals deeper cultural and strategic problems that go beyond any single product cycle.

Every quarter Apple delays meaningful AI investment, the gap widens.

Perhaps most telling is Siri's continued mediocrity. After more than a decade of development, Apple's virtual assistant remains laughably behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google Assistant, and other AI alternatives. Getting Siri to "not suck," as one analyst bluntly put it, now seems highly improbable given Apple's track record. This isn't just a product failure, but a symbol of organizational complacency.

Read: Is Apple making the same mistakes BlackBerry did? Here's how it can change course.

The AI revolution differs fundamentally from previous tech cycles. Unlike the mobile transition, where Apple could observe, learn and then leapfrog competitors with superior execution, AI advantages compound rapidly. Companies with early leads in data, talent and infrastructure create moats that become increasingly difficult to bridge. Every quarter Apple delays meaningful AI investment, the gap widens.

Consider the operating leverage dynamics at play. AI is inherently deflationary, benefiting companies that can spread development costs across massive user bases and infrastructure. Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft and Alphabet understand this, which is why they're being rewarded for aggressive capital expenditure. Apple's traditionally conservative approach of waiting to perfect products before launch could prove catastrophic in a field where speed and scale determine winners.

Apple's entire ecosystem assumes the smartphone will remain our primary device, but that assumption is increasingly looking vulnerable.

The smartphone-centric worldview that built Apple's empire may be under threat. Meta's bet on mixed-reality glasses as the next primary computing device isn't far-fetched when viewed through an AI lens. OpenAI is working with iPhone designer Jony Ive on a hardware project of its own.

If ambient intelligence becomes the norm — and users interact with AI through voice, gesture, and environmental sensors — the iPhone's touch screen interface could seem quaint. Apple's entire ecosystem assumes the smartphone will remain our primary device, but that assumption looks increasingly vulnerable.

Some argue that Apple's massive installed base of 2.2 billion users provides enough runway to catch up. This misses the point. Network effects in AI favor platforms that continuously learn from user interactions. Google search processes billions of queries every day, Meta's algorithms analyze social interactions, and Microsoft's Copilot learns from workplace productivity patterns. Apple's devices generate data, but the company lacks the AI infrastructure to derive competitive advantages from it.

The path forward requires dramatic action. Industry observers have called for Apple to acquire Perplexity, the AI search startup A partnership with Google's Gemini makes sense, as does bringing outside AI talent to Apple's management ranks. Any of these moves would be a departure from Apple's traditional playbook — and that's precisely why they're necessary.

Cook's recent acknowledgment that AI is "as big as the internet" ironically highlights the problem. By the time Apple's leadership recognized the internet's importance, competitors had already built dominant positions. The same pattern threatens to repeat with AI.

Apple remains a formidable cash machine with remarkably loyal customers. But loyalty has limits, especially when competitors offer genuinely superior capabilities. The company that revolutionized personal computing, music and mobile phones now risks becoming the next cautionary tale — a once-dominant player that missed the new wave.

The AI transformation is happening faster than previous technological shifts. Apple's tradition of careful observation and delayed but superior execution won't work this time. The question isn't whether Apple will eventually embrace AI. It's whether that embrace will come too late to matter.

Daniel Newman is the CEO of the Futurum Group, which has provided or provided research, analysis, advising and/or consulting to ServiceNow, Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon.com, IBM, AMD and other technology companies. Neither he nor the firm has any positions in any of the companies mentioned. Follow him on X @danielnewmanUV .

Also read: Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft share this one thing — and it'll keep the stocks fired up

More: Suze Orman reveals her favorite stock right now and the investing mistake that shaped her strategy

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Rubio impersonation campaign highlights the wide risk of AI voice scams

Secretary of State Marco Rubio 's voice was mimicked in a string of artificial-intelligence -powered impersonation attempts , multiple outlets reported Tuesday.

Why it matters: The threats from bad actors using rapidly evolving voice-cloning technology go beyond the typical "grandparent scam," with a series of high-profile incidents targeting or impersonating government officials.

• The hoax follows a May FBI warning about a text and voice messaging campaign to impersonate senior U.S. officials that targeted many other current and former senior government officials and their contacts.

Driving the news: U.S. authorities don't know who is behind the campaign, in which an imposter claiming to be Rubio reportedly contacted three foreign ministers, a member of Congress, and a governor, the Washington Post first reported.

• The scam used a Signal account with the display name "marco.rubio@state.gov," according to a State Department cable obtained by multiple outlets, in an attempt to contact powerful officials "with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts."
• A senior State Department official told Axios in a statement that it is aware of the incident and is currently investigating.
• "The Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to improve the department's cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents," the official said, but declined to offer further details.

Context: With just seconds of audio, AI voice-cloning tools can copy a voice that's virtually indistinguishable from the original to the human ear.

• Experts say that the tools can have legitimate accessibility and automation benefits — but they can also be easily weaponized by bad actors.
• Last year, fake robocalls used former President Biden's voice to discourage voting in the New Hampshire primary.
• In June, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre warned of a text and AI-generated voice messaging impersonation campaign in which threat actors pretended to be senior officials and prominent public figures to steal money and information.

Flashback: The accessibility of voice cloning tech has exploded in recent years, with hundreds of tools available, said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and founder of Silence , which specializes in voice fraud prevention.

• "Each tool is becoming even more, for lack of a better word, idiot proof, in terms of how easy it is to just create something," he said. "It's all just push of a button."
• He noted that audio of public officials and celebrities is readily available online for bad actors to seize. But ordinary people are still just as at risk.
• "I think we're in the Wild, Wild West as far as information is concerned," he said.

Between the lines : The Trump administration is particularly vulnerable to these types of scams due to its lax personal security practices and massive cuts to the country's defensive cyber operations .

• Trump has reportedly been picking up the phone for anyone who calls, and he loves using his personal cell phone — making him a prime target for spoofed calls and impersonation attempts.
• Officials have leaned heavily on Signal for confidential conversations — even accidentally messaging military strike plans to the top editor of the Atlantic.
• Even before returning to office, Trump's allies have said they've fallen for an Iran-backed spear-phishing campaign .

The intrigue : Government-issued phones typically have more advanced identity authentication tools and operate on private government networks — making it easier to stop suspicious activities before they occur.

Reality check : Most cybercriminals don't even need to use AI — people are still falling for the same old tricks, including texts from fake job recruiters.

• Americans lost over $12.5 billion to fraud last year, up 25% from 2023, according to the FTC.

Go deeper: AI voice cloning scams: A persistent threat with limited safeguards

Get the rundown of the biggest stories of the day with Axios Daily Essentials.

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Media faces existential threat from 'thieving' AI, ministers warned

The government has been warned at Westminster that artificial intelligence poses an "existential threat" to free press by stealing content, thus endangering quality news and thousands of reporter jobs.

Urgent reform was demanded in Parliament, as ministers were also questioned over Whitehall reaching an agreement with a Canadian tech giant that faces legal action by media companies over allegations of large-scale copyright infringement.

The call for swift action follows a bitter stand-off in the House of Lords over attempts to prevent the creative industries, including news outlets, from being exploited by machine-learning developers.

The controversy centered on fears of AI companies using copyrighted work without permission, with the government accused of "supporting thieves".

Responding to a question on the issue in the upper chamber, media minister Baroness Twycross said: "Trustworthy journalism plays a vital role in our democracy."

Rapid recent developments in generative AI pose both significant risks and opportunities for news media.

We are engaging with press stakeholders on this.

She added: "The Government will support our news media to capitalize on the huge potential benefits of the technology while mitigating its risk."

But deputy chairman of the Telegraph Group, and Conservative peer, Lord Black of Brentwood said: "AI poses an existential threat to independent media because of the way it scrapes their high quality content without either attribution or payment to those who create it, which is an act of theft, directly threatening the provision of quality news and the jobs of thousands of reporters."

Is the minister aware that research by market leader Cloudflare shows that, for example, for every 73,000 pages of content scraped by Anthropic's AI crawlers from news providers, there is just one single referral back to publishers' websites?

Does she realize that without this vital traffic, publishers can't sell advertising or subscriptions, and their businesses become unsustainable?

The free press can't wait years for copyright reform... we were promised immediate action on this issue when the Data Act was passed. When will we get some of it?

Responding, Lady Twycross said: "We want to get this right and for AI to work for everyone."

All of our work is around protecting rights that already exist for creatives and press and ensuring AI creates new revenue streams for them.

We are carefully reviewing all the responses to our consultation to ensure any proposals taken forward properly support both AI and creative sectors, including the media.

Filmmaker Baroness Kidron, who has been a leading critic of the Labour administration on this issue, said: "During the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Bill, the Government repeatedly asked Parliament to trust that they had the interests of UK copyright holders at the forefront."

So can the minister explain why the UK government has now signed a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian AI company Cohere, when Cohere is facing legal action from 13 news media copyright holders, including The Guardian, Forbes and The Atlantic?

Does she not agree with me that the Government might better earn Parliament's trust if, instead of rewarding AI companies which infringe copyright with opportunities, it limited those opportunities and indeed future Government contracts to companies that lawfully license inputs?

Lady Twycross said: "As I said, we do want to and need to make sure we get this right for everyone. I'm happy to have a conversation with her about the issue she raises."

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ChatGPT Remembers Everything About You—But Is This A Good Thing? - Dear Media

The gut-punch Black Mirror The episode "Be Right Back," from 2013, imagines a type of ChatGPT AI that consumes a lifetime of texts, posts, and videos to rebuild a dead boyfriend. At first, the replica feels comforting, yet the more perfectly it recalls every detail, the more painfully it exposes what real people are: contradictory, impatient, and sometimes selfish.

That chilling thought sits at the heart of today's debate over ChatGPT, because a tool that never forgets can be a brilliant assistant or a relentless archivist, depending on who is holding the receipts.

Martha's (Hayley Atwell) android boyfriend (Domhall Gleeson) proves that endless memory isn't automatically loving. The same question hovers over ChatGPT: Does total recall empower users or trap them in a data loop they can't escape? The Intersect with Cory Corrine dives straight into that tension. Corrine opens with a reality check, noting that "ChatGPT remembers everything about you, which is part of what makes it powerful." But power, of course, cuts both ways.

ChatGPT enters the mainstream and Gen Z embraces 'data nihilism' ‘

"A colleague of mine on the show noted that on the train last week, every single person that she saw had their laptop open to ChatGPT," Corrine remarked regarding her recent conversation. Tech and culture journalist Taylor Lorenz, one of The Intersect 's two guests, observes a new resignation among young users, calling it "data nihilism." Today's teens and Gen Zers offer a collective shrug, demurring, "What power do I have?" because they're assuming their information is already scattered across the web.

Yet that shrug can mask real risks. "We're left with no choice but to proceed, but proceed with caution," Corrine states.

AI: the risks and rewards

Privacy scholar Dr. Jen King, another guest on The Intersect, reminds listeners that defaults matter. "Those chats are being, for the most part, collected by default and being used to retrain these systems," she says. So, unless users toggle settings, every prompt becomes training fuel. King is a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence .

“I personally use a service called DeleteMe to remove my data from the web,” Lorenz says. King counters with a bigger-picture warning, noting, “The value proposition right now for most of these [AI] tools is really oversold.”

When Corrine asks whether the conveniences outweigh the costs, Lorenz doesn’t slam the brakes. "Try it out, see if it’s useful for something," she suggests. "But just go into it in a mindful way."

King echoes that vibe, stressing that limitless personalization invites manipulation. She flags looming "AI agents and just this increased desire to make personalized experiences for everybody," suggesting that a chatbot that recommends a fire extinguisher might quietly steer users toward the brand that paid for placement.

How to keep your data—and sanity—intact

Proceeding with caution doesn't mean abandoning technology. It means adjusting habits so that ChatGPT serves you rather than surveils you.

• Check the settings first. Turn off chat history if the platform allows; King notes that many systems collect data by default.
• Limit what you share. Lorenz highlights how users "might be actually disclosing a lot more data than they realize" during casual prompts. Sensitive health or financial details deserve an offline notebook, not an AI text box.
• Scrub what's already out there. Services like DeleteMe help, and so does an old-fashioned Google search of your name.
• Advocate for better laws. Lorenz urges listeners to "focus on data privacy and advocate for it" because systemic rules protect everyone.
• Remember the off switch. King keeps location tracking disabled because constant pings "paint a portrait of what you're doing and everywhere you go."

ChatGPT's memory is a black mirror, so use it wisely.

Black Mirror warned that perfect recall can feel inhuman, and Corrine’s panel shows the warning is no longer fiction. ChatGPT can draft résumés, brainstorm trip itineraries, or teach quadratic equations at lightning speed. It can also stockpile heartbreak diaries and late-night confessions for uses that no one has yet imagined. The most intelligent move isn’t panic; it’s mindfulness.

ChatGPT , Cory Corrine , Taylor Lorenz , technology , The Intersect

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