New AI Tool Allows You To “Talk” to YouTube Videos
I tried it and these are my takeaways
As soon as I heard about this new AI tool, I knew I had to try it.
The tool allows you to “talk” to YouTube videos. That sounds a bit odd but stay with me. In this article, I’ll explain the tool, what you can do with it, and how you could use it for learning, blogging, and more.
I tried the tool and this is what happened.
The Tool to Talk to YouTube
This is the tool that allows you to “talk” to YouTube: You-tldr (not an affiliate link).
Here is a screenshot of the homepage:
You-TLDR.com is an AI tool that enables users to get the TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) of any YouTube video in seconds.
It’s designed to make it easier for people to find and interact with valuable video content quickly. The tool provides a transcription of the video along with a summary that highlights the critical points of the video.
Additionally, users can interact with a chatbot, which provides more details on the video and answers any questions they may have.
You’ll read my interaction with the chatbot later in this article (it didn’t go as planned).
You-TLDR.com is also built with several other features, such as the ability to summarize many videos and interact with videos in different languages. The tool supports over 100 languages, making it accessible to a global audience.
Furthermore, it’s entirely free to use (with limits), and users don’t need to sign up or provide any personal information to use the tool.
That’s pretty cool in my book.
How Does It Work?
You-TLDR.com uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to provide users with a summary of any YouTube video.
The tool works by analyzing the video’s audio track and transcribing it into text, which is then processed by the AI to create a summary of the video’s critical points.
The tool’s chatbot is also powered by AI, which uses natural language processing to understand users’ questions and provide helpful responses.
In addition to providing summaries and chatbot interactions, the tool has a multilingual interface, which allows users to interact with videos in different languages, making it a valuable resource for language learners.
Since I’m currently studying French, I will probably experiment with the language feature.
How Can You Use It?
You-TLDR.com is incredibly easy to use.
To get started, all you need to do is copy and paste a YouTube video link into the tool’s search bar. The tool will then analyze the video’s audio track and provide you with a transcription and summary of the video’s key points.
You can also use the chatbot to interact with the video further and (ideally) ask any questions you may have.
You’ll figure out why I put “ideally” in parenthesis in just a moment.
In addition to using the tool for personal use, You-TLDR.com is also beneficial for content creators who want to provide their audiences with quick and easy summaries of their videos.
By using the tool, creators can ensure that their audiences get the most valuable information from their content, even if they don’t have time to watch the entire video.
For bloggers like me who might want to reference YouTube videos, I can theoretically get the information from the video and talk about it without having to sit through the entire 19-minute video.
At least that’s what I thought before I tried it myself.
Example of Me Using The Tool for a YouTube Video
To give you an idea of how You-TLDR.com works, let’s take a look at an example. Suppose you’re interested in watching Jon Tron’s video, “The Most Cursed Dating Shows.” The video is 19 minutes long, so you may not have time to watch the entire thing.
By using You-TLDR.com, you can quickly get a summary of the video’s critical points.
After copying and pasting the video’s link into the tool’s search bar, You-TLDR.com provided me with a transcription and summary of the video’s key points.
Here is a screenshot:
The Summary
The summary highlighted the video’s most significant takeaways, such as how dating shows can be weird and creepy and how some of the show’s concepts are just downright strange.
This is the actual summary of the video from You-TLDR:
The video starts off by introducing a mobile game called Viking Rise that has a $10,000 cash giveaway. The game allows the player to recruit Vikings and set sail with fearless warriors to ambush enemies from the sea. The game has an idol feature that enables automatic upgrades and more without lifting a finger.
The video then introduces a dating show called Sexy Beasts where people dress up in horrifying monster prosthetics to obscure their entire species to see if love can hold true without looks. The host looks at all the costumes and categorizes them into passable, mid, and forsaken. The video then moves on to Room Raiders, a dating show where someone picks their date based on the contents of their room.
15:00KJ visits multiple houses and encounters different people while trying to decide on a winner. He investigates the smell of the underwear at one house and admires the artwork at another. Eventually, KJ meets the girls and picks Andrea as the winner while the other contestants berate him. The video ends with a reference to “mommy milkies” and an unsettling comment.
As you can see, the first part is just a summary of a sponsorship (which was pretty long at the start of the video).
I tried to get You-TLDR to skip that part by pasting in the YouTube link with the timing that started after the sponsorship portion but, apparently, that didn’t work.
While it’s not a perfect summary, it gets the main ideas right.
Chatting with YouTube
This is where everything went downhill fast.
In addition to the summary, You-TLDR.com also provided me with the option to interact with a chatbot about the video.
By clicking on the chatbot button, I was prompted to ask any questions I may have about the video. First, I asked what dating shows were covered in the video.
The tool responded: “I‘m sorry, I cannot provide an answer without the context or video mentioned in the question.”
Weird, since I thought the tool is somehow automatically connected to the video link I inserted. But ok, no problem.
I revised my question to include the name of the video: Please give me a list of takeaways from the video — The most cursed dating shows by Jon Tron.
To me, this sounded pretty solid. Unfortunately, this didn’t work either.
I got the somewhat humorous answer: “I’m sorry, as an AI language model, I cannot watch videos or access the internet.”
Suddenly, I felt like I was on a blind date with someone that would never work out. I just sat in awkward silence, wondering why I was there and what I was even doing with my life.
After trying to ask the chatbot a few more questions to get information, I finally asked the bot if it was pranking me. It insisted it was not pranking me but that’s probably what a prankster AI would say.
Do I Recommend This Tool?
In short, No.
I think the tool has a lot of potential but it certainly did not impress me with the chat feature. The transcription and summary were decent for a free tool.
There is a paid premium version of the tool but the free version did not motivate me to try that out. Sorry, not sorry.
Maybe the premium version works much better (like I’ve seen on TikTok videos).
Here’s the rub:
- The tool looks good design-wise.
- The tool really didn’t work all that well.
- You can get free transcriptions from YouTube itself.
- You can take those free transcriptions and feed them into the free version of ChatGPT to get a better summary.
- Then, you can use ChatGPT (or other AI chatbots) to ask questions about the transcript and/or summary.
Sure, it’s not the same as chatting with a bot connected directly to the YouTube video but it’s a better way to get much the same goal accomplished.
Final Thoughts
I’m left feeling a bit disappointed with the tool.
Chatting with a YouTube video (or a bot trained on a specific video) is actually a really cool idea. It’s something that I could use on a weekly basis for both personal and professional tasks.
Maybe a programmer will come along and make a better version of the tool.
One can hope 😃.
