YouTube live 📺 streams auto - captioning, chat replay, and location tags w/search filter

Live streaming on YouTube is getting a number of updates this morning aimed at enhancing the experience for viewers. The video site is introducing automatic captioning to live streams, while viewers will be better able to interact with content.

YouTube has long featured automatic captioning capabilities that are mostly accurate. Since 2009, a billion videos have been auto-captioned and the service is now enabling them on live streams. "With our live automatic speech recognition (LASR) technology, you’ll get captions with error rates and latency approaching industry standards. We’ll roll this out in the coming weeks, and will continue to improve accuracy and latency of automatic captions," said a statement from the company.

Watching live videos and interacting with creators and other fans is a popular phenomenon in this day and age. YouTube now wants to lets users relive that experience after the fact. Chat reply alongside the video will allow viewers to follow a conversation even after a stream is over.

YouTube’s last update today allows creators to add a location tag to mobile live streams and video uploads. Users will be able to explore videos from a place by clicking on the new tag, with search now gaining a similar location filter.