YouTube to use AI to help podcasters promote themselves with clips and Shorts

On Tuesday, YouTube introduced new tools for podcasters at its Made on YouTube live event in New York, including new ways to turn video podcasts into clips and YouTube Shorts, and a new feature that helps create videos for audio-only podcasters. Both will be powered by AI and will roll out in the months ahead.

Using AI technology, video podcast creators in the U.S. will be able to create clips more easily with AI suggestions, the company says. This will be available in the “coming months,” while a feature that will transform those clips into YouTube Shorts will arrive early next year.

The addition could give YouTube more fodder to compete with rival short-form video apps, like TikTok and Instagram (Reels), while also directing users to podcasters they might find interesting on YouTube’s larger platform, driving subscriptions and engagement.

Meanwhile, another new feature also available early next year will help audio podcasters turn their content into video. Using AI, these creators will be able to generate a customizable video for their podcast, the company says. However, the feature will only be available to “select podcasters” when it launches, with a larger expansion planned for later in 2026.

YouTube has been more focused on building out tools for podcasters over the past several years, making pods a more prominent feature on YouTube’s home page and its YouTube Music service alike. Meanwhile, Spotify, at the same time, has been inching into its market with added support for video podcasts and other engagement features for podcasters, like comments, polls, and Q&As, as well as monetization tools.

In February, the company announced YouTube had surpassed 1 billion monthly podcaster viewers. Today, YouTube announced that users, as of July 2025, now consume over 100 million hours of podcasts daily, with more than 30% of those hours starting as a livestream or premiere.