Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The YouTube Music app’s code contains hints of a new “Ask for Music” feature.
- This feature may allow users to find music through conversational prompts and voice commands.
- The YouTube Music app is also getting a new launch animation.
It looks like Google is working on bringing an exciting new AI feature to YouTube Music. While we recently reported that the Gemini is getting its own YouTube Music extension, the app itself has been mostly AI-free, aside from the AI-generated playlist cover feature. It looks like that’s set to change soon.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
In the YouTube Music app for Android (Version 7.06.53), we found references to a new “Ask for Music” feature. We’re not entirely sure if that’s the official name, but the code gives us a good idea of what it might involve.
Code
<string name="ask_for_music_prompt">Ask for music</string> <string name="ask_music_submit_button">Submit</string> <string name="ai_feature_input_disclaimer">AI-generated responses are experimental. Quality and accuracy may vary. Please don’t enter confidential or personal information regarding yourself or others.</string>These snippets are located in a file named conversational_text_input.xml. This suggests that the new feature could replace the current voice search function (the one accessed through the mic icon).
YouTube Music already lets you search for music using voice commands, but the disclaimer about the experimental nature of AI-generated responses here could also suggest a more conversational search option. This could potentially allow users to search for music in natural language, like searching for songs by describing the music videos or asking for songs similar to [artist/song name], etc.
This approach would align with Google’s broader push towards integrating AI and natural language processing into its products and services. Of course, these are mere speculations, and we’ll need to wait and see how the feature is finally implemented in YouTube Music.
Another interesting tidbit from our teardown is that YouTube Music could soon get an app launch animation similar to the YouTube app, and it looks pretty slick. You can see it in action above.
As always, it’s unclear when these updates could make it to the app for the general user. It’s likely that could happen in the coming weeks and months.
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