YouTube on Thursday started rolling out an early version of its Shorts quick-clip feature in the United States, ramping up its challenge to TikTok.

The popularity of YouTube Shorts soared during testing in India, and it has been racking up more than 6.5 billion views a day by people tuning in overall, according to product lead Todd Sherman of the Google-owned video service.

"We're introducing our YouTube Shorts Beta to the United States starting today, as we continue to build…