YouTube Rolls Out ‘Live’ Updates, Including Auto-Captions And New Super Chat Triggers

YouTube is rolling out several tweaks to its live video product, beginning with live automatic captions — making it one of the first major platforms to provide them, the company says.

In addition to rolling out chat replay today, meaning that viewers will be able to watch the chat conversation that occurred during a stream in replay (see below), YouTube will also be adding automatic captions to live broadcasts in coming weeks. When captions haven’t been provided for a live video, for instance, YouTube will auto-generate captions (in English) using its Live Automatic Speech Recognition (LASR) technology — a feature that it has used to translate more than 1 billion standard videos dating back to 2009.

Additionally, YouTube is giving users the ability to add location tags to their mobile live streams, which they can utilize to share their favorite hotspots, according to YouTube’s live video product lead Kurt Wilms

. By clicking on a tag, viewers can also explore other videos hailing from that location.

Finally, YouTube is adding more options for Super Chat — or the feature that enables viewers to pay for extra-visible comments during live broadcasts. While YouTube first announced that Super Chats would be able to trigger real-life events in May, creators can now sync their channels with If This Then That (IFTTT), a service that links various apps and smart devices. This means that Super Chat will now be able to trigger reactions on over 600 IFTTT-connected devices, including turning on lights, activating pet feeders, and shooting confetti cannons.

Super Chat, which is already available on desktops and Android devices, is rolling out today on iOS.