This is interesting.

YouTube’s testing a new quiz option in the mobile app, which is designed to help users learn more about topics of interest, while also helping YouTube get a better understanding of how well each video covers a given subject.

The project will also use generative AI to come up with questions to test your understanding, based on clips that you’ve watched in the app.

As explained by YouTube:

“If you’re a viewer in the experiment, you may see AI-generated quizzes start to pop up on your app homepage. The quizzes will test your understanding of a subject covered in a video you recently watched. If you choose to take a quiz, a link to the recently watched video will appear under it so you can easily navigate back to learn more about the topic at hand.”

So, it’s like, school work, but on YouTube, and created by AI?

Not sure that sounds overly appealing.

The experiment sounds like an offshoot of YouTube’s ‘Study Hall’ initiative, which it launched earlier this year, and aims to provide more direct education opportunities via the YouTube app.

This new test also relates to educational content, with the new AI quizzes displayed to viewers who’ve watched several educational videos in the app, helping to solidify their knowledge of a given topic.

Would that be of interest to you? Would you want to be tested on your knowledge of a subject?

I guess, this could be a good way to actually embed education, as opposed to people simply using the internet as their memory, or brain in some cases. With all of the world’s knowledge accessible on our mobile devices 24/7, there’s little need to retain so much info inside your own head – and maybe, this is a way to actually facilitate learning, by gamifying the process, and getting people to commit more of the key lessons to memory.

In that sense, it could be an interesting element – though it will be dependent on users actually taking the tests. I suspect, then, that YouTube will only see real take-up if it adds a leader board or similar, to really gamify the process – but with unique AI-generated quizzes, maybe that’s not possible?

It’s hard to say without seeing it in action – which you may do, if you’re watching educational clips in the app.

YouTube says the experiment is being run with a small percentage of viewers on iOS and Android.