YouTube, videos that automatically speed up for you

You're probably familiar with the 1.25x, 1.5x, or even 2x speed-up option on YouTube. It's the option that lets you speed up a video when the narrator is talking at a snail's pace, or when you're really short on time. YouTube on autopilot: is that progress? No time or energy to click on this option? No problem. YouTube is testing a new feature that will help create a new generation of lazy viewers: Auto Speed mode. As the name suggests, this option puts a video on autopilot, automatically speeding up long sections and returning to normal speed when things get interesting again. We don't know how YouTube decides what deserves to be sped up, but we suspect artificial intelligence is involved. It remains to be seen whether the test with a select group of users will prove conclusive enough for Auto-Speed to be rolled out to everyone in the (near) future. Otherwise, content providers could themselves ensure that they deliver calibrated, edited videos resulting from editorial choices. But that's more difficult.