Coinbase AI push notification hallucinated World Cup winner

Coinbase sent a push notification about Norway beating Brazil in their World Cup match yesterday hours before the result of the match was actually decided.

The company’s AI hallucinated the “news” and, because Coinbase employees have permitted non-fact-checked push notifications in the first place, the computer blasted it onto the phones of countless customers. 

Despite Coinbase’s 3-2 score turning out to be wrong, Norway did actually emerge victorious, winning 2-1 against the five-time world champions with Norway and Manchester City striker Erling Haaland scoring the goals.

Disconcertingly, Coinbase’s AI had also made up commentary about Haaland being the goalscorer before either of his actual goals hit the net.

Obviously, there are only two possible team names for the winner of a soccer game, so Coinbase guessing this isn’t particularly remarkable. Haaland is also Norway’s leading goalscorer, so he was also pretty likely to be the man to get the goals.

Still, Coinbase’s push notification was enough to generate hundreds of thousands of views worth of social media controversy.

Read more: Brian Armstrong sold more stock in 12 months than Coinbase’s Q1 loss

Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, doesn’t run its own sportsbook. Instead, it routes sports prediction markets through Kalshi’s federally regulated event-contract platform.

The exchange rolled that partnership out to all 50 states in January. The AI notification pulls in data from Kalshi, occasionally framing sharp market swings as so-called news.

Unfortunately, media often reports on the odds of prediction market betting lines as though these percentages are the odds of an event occurring in real life.

In reality, prediction markets are similar to binary options contracts and gambling, trivially easy to manipulate with relatively small amounts of money, and disproportionately reward market-makers.

Concerned, one customer posted a screenshot of Coinbase’s push notification about the Norway vs. Brazil outcome. “Apparently Coinbase has opened a miniature black hole, stepped into the future, and returned with news of Norway bouncing Brazil out of the World Cup… hours before the game has even started.”

More screenshots spread. A widely shared post complained that the exchange hallucinated a World Cup victory for game that hadn’t even played, drawing over 150,000 views. 

this is what happens when a crypto company uses AI to generate sports prediction markets @coinbase is hallucinating results
for a World Cup game that hasn’t even been played yet and sending factually incorrect notifications to its millions of users as “breaking news”… pic.twitter.com/coD8xY2O0S

Another user tagged Coinbase and asked, “Insider info or AI hallucination? This match won’t take place for another five hours.”

Coinbase has previously blasted its customers with troubling prediction market alerts. It’s promised to fix the problem.

During the March Madness basketball tournament, customers complained to CEO Brian Armstrong for flooding lock screens on phones with prompts that encouraged them to “predict” sports gameplay.

Armstrong blamed a targeting bug and apologized. 

Nevertheless, prediction markets alerts keep blasting for one simple reason: profit. Indeed, prediction markets are one of Coinbase’s fastest-growing business lines.

Bernstein analysts pegged the product at a roughly $100 million annualized run rate barely two months after it went live. Kalshi, Coinbase’s prediction market partner, paid roughly $20 million to plaster its logo across World Cup stadiums.

The incentive to make sports feel urgent and immediately tradeable is enormous.

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