Will Google Gemini Destroy YouTube? — How to Summarize YouTube Videos in 3 Easy Steps
One of the differentiators of Google Gemini, formerly Bard, is the ability to summarize YouTube videos by simply providing a YouTube link.
Prior to Gemini, I had to open the auto-generated transcript of a YouTube video, toggle off the timestamps, and copy and paste the text into an AI chatbot. The output is a summary of the transcript that I add to my “second brain”. This sequence of manual steps is not difficult but repeating them over and over can get tiring if you’re summarizing a lot of videos.
Summarizing YouTube videos is a killer application of AI for me because it makes my “second brain” smarter and with Gemini Extensions, which automates this process, I can save even more time by following these 3 easy steps.
1. Enable the YouTube Extension
Goto gemini.google.com/extensions. If the built-in YouTube extension is not already enabled, toggle it On.
2. Summarize a YouTube video with Gemini and a Simple Prompt
For this example, I am summarizing a video from one of my favorite YouTubers: productivity guru Ali Abdaal.
Goto gemini.google.com. For my prompt, I’m using: “Summarize this YouTube video in 3 bullet points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_DOG_mXz5w.” That’s it.
You can experiment with summarizing other videos by simply providing another YouTube link.
Gemini summarizes the video in 3 bullets points and even provides a nice thumbnail of the video.
3. Verify the Output
If the summarized output does not meet your expectation, then provide feedback to Google using the thumbs up, thumbs down option which appears after the output.
Will Gemini Destroy YouTube?
The ability to summarize a YouTube video using Gemini is very powerful but raises a serious question: Will Gemini destroy YouTube?
If Gemini can summarize videos with minimal effort, why would consumers watch videos and why would creators create videos if no one watches them? Personally, I still watch YouTube videos because I learn better from absorbing content in multiple forms and so I can verify the output of Gemini but I can definitely see a future where I’m short on time and go straight to Gemini to summarize the main points. The thought of disrupting YouTube is scary since we could lose a lot of educational content from YouTube.
Like many predictions around AI, Gemini will likely force creators to evolve to the new reality.
Summary
Summarizing YouTube videos is very easy using Gemini with its native YouTube integration and consists of 3 steps:
- Enable the YouTube Extension.
- Provide the link to the YouTube video with a prompt asking to summarize the video.
- Verify the output.
In addition to the YouTube extension, there are other native extensions, notably the Google Workspace extension, which can supercharge your ability to summarize even more content.
