YouTube has a new tool to help restore hacked channels: an AI chatbot

YouTube has announced a new AI assistant feature to help users recover accounts that have been targeted by hackers. Described as a “troubleshooting tool” on Google’s support page, the chatbot can be accessed via the YouTube Help Center, and should ask hacked creators a series of questions to guide them through the process of securing their impacted Google logins and reversing any changes that have been made to their YouTube channels.

The support assistant is currently only available in English, and access to “certain troubleshooting features” is limited to a select group of “certain creators,” but Google says it plans to eventually make the feature available to all YouTube creators.

We’ve managed to access the tool and the results seem… fine. It’s a fairly standard support chatbot with no generative AI weirdness detected so far, and some guardrails appear to be in place. It doesn’t really solve one of the major complaints that creators have voiced, however: that YouTube is nigh impossible to contact when issues arise. Speaking to a YouTube rep directly is typically limited to only the largest creators in the platform’s partner program, leaving smaller accounts left to resolve their own situations via help pages or seemingly automated responses from YouTube support.