Millions of football fans are using artificial intelligence to create viral team anthems ahead of next month's World Cup tournament in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with some songs racking up millions of plays on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram while drawing more interest than official tracks commissioned by FIFA.
The trend started in February when French artist Crystalo released "Imbattables," a song dedicated to the French national team that opens with a call-and-response listing the names of Kylian Mbappe and other star players. The track was so successful that it spawned a wave of copycat anthems across platforms. Brazilian producer Guilherme Maia, who goes by M4IA, followed with a similar format using a trending phonk melody that he created by layering different elements together with AI assistance.
What happened next surprised no one tracking internet trends. Songs for Portugal, Argentina, Germany, and dozens of other national teams appeared almost overnight, each recycled M4IA's exact format, complete with the phonk beat, player name-chanting, and a call for respect for the squad's "king" – Cristiano Ronaldo in Portugal's version, Lionel Messi in Argentina's. Some fans have openly preferred these AI-generated anthems to the official World Cup song that FIFA commissioned from musicians Jelly Roll and Carin Leon. Even Shakira's highly anticipated World Cup track, released last week, failed to slow the AI phenomenon.
M4IA told AFP that what he sees now is people following a trend and trying to recreate a feeling, comparing it to artistic emulation that has always existed in music. He said he built his original track himself and used AI as an assistant when creating certain elements, rather than simply feeding a prompt to a music generation tool like Suno. But he acknowledged that the technology raises serious questions about authorship and copyright. "In music, there are clear rules," he said. "You can't just copy someone else's work or use samples without permission, even if AI is involved."
Jason Palamara, an assistant professor of music technology at Indiana University, pointed out a fundamental problem with how these tools work. He said there is a lack of clarity over how artists are credited if their copyrighted work is used to train the AI models in the first place. "It had to come from somewhere," he said. The technology also produces inconsistencies that mirror the kinds of errors seen in AI-generated images. A fan-made World Cup song for Portugal was sung with a Brazilian accent, while a Colombian version read James Rodriguez's first name with an English rather than Spanish pronunciation. Music created with AI often lacks the complexity of human-produced work, Palamara added, appearing as "one compact product, rather than a product where there's multiple tracks that have gone into it, where it has more texture."
Yet Morgan Hayduk, co-CEO of music rights software company Beatdapp, said many listeners may not care about artistic complexity. "There seems to be a cohort of people who actually don't care," he observed. "They like the music, and they like the back story that it came from a large language model and not a songwriter or a group." The World Cup kicks off in June and July, and the AI song trend shows no signs of stopping as teams prepare for the tournament.
