Published May 21, 2026
World Cup fans are using artificial intelligence to churn out viral songs to support their teams ahead of next month’s tournament.
A fan-made soccer anthem has amassed millions of views on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, but experts say the viral song raises questions about song ownership, artist compensation and the recognition of human creativity.
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But many users don’t seem to mind, with some even preferring the AI-generated song to the official national anthem commissioned by musicians Jelly Roll and Karin Leung by world football governing body FIFA.
Shakira’s long-awaited World Cup song was also released last week, but the AI fan song trend is still building excitement on social media ahead of the tournament, which will be held in cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July.
This trend seems to have started with the release of “Imbattables”, a song dedicated to the French team, released in February by Crystalo, an artist listed on Spotify as France’s “best AI musical creator”. The song begins with a call-and-response that lists the names of Kylian Mbappé and other France national team stars.
This was followed by the Brazilian national anthem, accompanied by a similar recitation of names and a trending folk melody, which producer Guilherme Maia, aka M4IA, said was created by layering various elements with the help of AI.
Trucks from top teams, including Portugal, Argentina and Germany, soon appeared across the platform, drawing further praise from fans.
However, the Brazilian version closely resembled the French prototype, while later songs copied Maia’s format exactly. Each repurposed the folk beat and listed the players’ names before calling for respect to the team’s “king,” a feature limited to songs such as Cristiano Ronaldo in the Portuguese song and Lionel Messi in the Argentinian version.
“What’s happening now is more about people following trends or trying to recreate a certain feeling,” Maia told AFP, adding that artistic emulation has always existed in music.
Although he was enthusiastic about the possibilities that AI brings to production, he also acknowledged that the technology raises new questions about authorship and copyright.
“There are clear rules in music: You can’t copy someone else’s work or use their samples without permission, even if AI is involved.”
Maia emphasized that rather than asking a music generation tool like Suno to create a song with a single prompt, he built the tracks himself and used AI as an assistant when creating certain elements.
But Jason Palamara, an assistant professor of music technology at Indiana University, said given the way the model exists, it’s not clear how artists will be credited if their copyrighted work is used to train them.
“It must have come from somewhere,” he said.
Discrepancies that appear in AI-generated images can also appear in music created using this technology.
For example, a fan-written World Cup song for Portugal was sung in a Brazilian accent, while the Colombian version had James Rodríguez’s first name pronounced in English rather than in Spanish.
AI-generated music can also lack complexity, Paramara says.
“This is one compact product that is more textured, rather than a product with multiple tracks built into it.”
Still, Morgan Hejduk, co-CEO of music copyright software company Beatdup, said listeners who enjoy World Cup fan songs may not be looking for artistic complexity.
“There seems to be a certain number of people who don’t really care,” Hejduk said. “They like the music, and they like the story behind it, that it came from a larger language model, rather than a songwriter or a group.”
He said that despite concerns about how the industry will adapt to AI, improvised songs that can be sung by fans or featured in advertising are clear use cases for AI-generated music at this stage.
“Knowing what’s in generative works like World Cup fan songs is a thorny Rubicon that the music industry must now cross.”
