Football fans around the world are increasingly using artificial intelligence to create and share viral songs supporting their national teams ahead of next month’s FIFA World Cup.
The AI-generated anthems have gained millions of views and streams across platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, sparking debate over copyright, ownership and the future of music production.
The growing trend comes despite the release of official World Cup music commissioned by FIFA from musicians Jelly Roll and Carin Leon.
A separate World Cup track by Shakira was also released recently, but fan-made AI songs have continued to dominate online conversations leading up to the tournament, which will take place across the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July.
The trend reportedly began with a French football anthem titled “Imbattables,” released in February by AI music creator Crystalo, whose profile on Spotify describes him as France’s “premier AI musical creator.”
The song references stars including Kylian Mbappe and quickly gained traction online.
Soon after, similar AI-generated tracks emerged for countries including Brazil, Portugal, Argentina and Germany.
Many of the songs follow a similar structure, combining electronic beats with chants of players’ names and references to football icons such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Brazilian producer Guilherme Maia, known professionally as M4IA, said he used AI tools to assist in creating elements of his song but insisted the production process still involved significant personal input.
He acknowledged, however, that the rise of AI-generated music raises difficult questions about authorship and intellectual property rights.
Experts have also expressed concern over how copyrighted music may have been used to train AI systems without proper attribution or compensation to original artists.
Jason Palamara, an assistant professor of music technology at Indiana University, said the growing use of AI in music production has exposed uncertainty over how creators should be credited.
Industry analysts also noted that AI-generated songs can sometimes lack originality or contain noticeable inconsistencies, including pronunciation errors and repetitive production patterns.
Despite such concerns, some listeners appear more interested in catchy, easy-to-share content than artistic complexity.
Morgan Hayduk, co-chief executive of music rights software company Beatdapp, said AI-generated fan songs demonstrate how quickly audiences are adapting to machine-assisted creativity.
According to him, short-form, chant-style songs used for sporting events and social media campaigns may become one of the most commercially viable applications of AI-generated music.
