TLDR: Yelp has launched a new AI-powered feature that automatically creates short, engaging videos for restaurants, bars, and nightlife businesses. These videos are generated by stitching together user-submitted photos and videos, with AI-driven narration and captions, and are now available nationwide on Yelp’s iOS app.
Yelp is revolutionizing how users discover local businesses with the nationwide rollout of its new AI-powered video feature, now available on its iOS app. This innovative tool automatically generates short, dynamic videos for restaurants, bars, and nightlife establishments by compiling and synthesizing user-submitted photos and videos. The feature, which debuted in testing last year, is prominently displayed in Yelp’s TikTok-style vertically scrolling home feed, aiming to provide richer visual experiences and enhance discovery for users.
The technology behind these AI-stitched videos is sophisticated, integrating several advanced AI tools. OpenAI’s large language models are utilized to craft compelling scripts and narrations, drawing insights from aggregated Yelp reviews to highlight a business’s unique qualities, such as its food, drinks, and ambiance. The AI-generated narrator’s voice is provided by ElevenLabs, while Amazon Transcribe ensures synchronized on-screen captions that match the narration. The resulting videos seamlessly blend user-contributed visuals with AI commentary and captions, presented in a vertical format familiar to social media users.
Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s Chief Product Officer, stated the company’s ambition to create ‘as many videos as possible,’ emphasizing that videos will only be produced for businesses with sufficient reviews, photos, and videos to tell an authentic and engaging story. While the videos themselves are not personalized, Yelp employs personalized signals to determine when to display these videos to individual users. This initiative builds upon Yelp’s existing AI features, including review summaries and review filters, which help users quickly gain precise insights.
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Users and businesses retain the ability to report any videos they find inaccurate or offensive through an in-app reporting feature. Yelp also conducts periodic large-scale content audits to maintain quality and appropriateness. This new video tool is part of Yelp’s broader strategy to integrate AI, which also includes smarter review summaries and review filters, all designed to make finding new favorite spots easier without requiring additional effort from users or businesses. Only venues with a substantial amount of user-generated content will be featured in these AI-driven video stories.
