YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It

Alex Kantrowitz (0:00)

How much should AI decide what you watch on YouTube and determine what people like me create? Let's talk about it with YouTube CEO, Neal Mohan, right after this.

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Alex Kantrowitz (1:08)

Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool headed and nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We have a great show for you today. We're going to talk all about A.I.'s dramatic influence on what we watch on YouTube and what we create on YouTube, whether it's advisable and a bunch of new products and features that YouTube is releasing today. And we're joined by the CEO of YouTube, Neal Mohan. Neal, great to see you.

Neal Mohan (1:31)

Good to see you, Alex. Great to be here.

Alex Kantrowitz (1:33)

So I went back in the archives and I tweeted about your move from Google's ad division to YouTube 11 years ago in 2015 And I said, Neal Mohan is off to YouTube ready to make them some money. Because you had been on the ad side. It worked.

YouTube today, for those who are catching up, is a $60 billion annual business. You can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Netflix is $45 billion, so dramatically bigger than Netflix. More than 2 billion users globally, it's growing 13% a year. It accounts for 14% of all US streaming or viewing.

Neal Mohan (2:17)

Streaming.

Alex Kantrowitz (2:17)

Streaming, yeah. And that means a billion daily hours of YouTube are watched on TV alone, and the company's paid out $100 billion to creators over the past four years.

So when we talk about YouTube, it's not just the cat on the skateboard or the dog on the skateboard anymore, this is a media force.

Neal Mohan (2:37)

Yeah, you know, the first thing that comes to mind when you mention that tweet is time flies, it's been a long time. And, you know, YouTube is really kind of everything that you described it to be there. You know, we've been around, as you know, we celebrated our 20th anniversary last year.

And you're right, we're this platform that started as a place where you would upload videos like the ones that you described. And now we are a streaming service where 2 billion plus people come to every single day connecting with millions and millions of creators. And in an essence, that's the magic of YouTube. And as a result of all of that fandom that manifests on YouTube every day, that's what creates the business opportunities, of course, that you talked about for our creators, for our partners, for the brands that work with YouTube. But also, I think probably even more importantly, creates sort of the cultural phenomenon that is YouTube. And so that's super exciting.

Alex Kantrowitz (3:39)

Yeah, and when you think about like the ability of companies like Netflix to grow, or Spotify to grow, Amazon Video, you know, when I'm asked, okay, who's the big competition they're coming up against? It's often YouTube. And you know, you could say it's a Netflix versus HBO battle, but it's really Netflix and HBO versus YouTube. It's Spotify and Apple podcasts, which we have big listenership on, but it's versus YouTube, where I would say most of our listenership is on. And that is a big shift. But there's sort of a difference between YouTube and these other, you know, legacy media platforms, which is that you would have a group of people programming, thinking what the audience wants, and then adjusting based off of how the shows do for like a Netflix or an HBO. With YouTube, it's largely people programmed. And by that, I mean, it's like people like me and other creators putting videos out there, seeing the distribution that they get, finding an audience, seeing what the audience wants, and oftentimes doubling down on what the audience wants. But a lot of that has been almost an inexact science for creators on YouTube. You sort of, you kind of, you listen to the algorithm and you make some of your own decisions and then you program. But now what we're seeing with the fact that I would say YouTube is the Google product that uses AI the most, is that AI is coming into the product, coming into the programming decisions. So for instance, we're going to talk about some products and features that you're announcing today, one of them is drafts, where you upload a draft. A creator can now upload a draft on YouTube and get feedback and suggested edits that's coming in from YouTube's AI. When you do that, YouTube will also suggest thumbnails and it will give you feedback. Hey, your thumbnail might do better if you maybe put two faces in or look more like Mr. Beast when he's like into the camera.