Artificial intelligence is creeping into the World Cup thanks to Google Gemini

slowly but surely, Artificial intelligence is finding its way into sports. Latest location? This year’s World Cup, where Google We will partner with defending champions Argentina to showcase it twin On and off the field.

The agreement with the Argentine Football Association (AFA) makes Gemini the main global sponsor of the national team. As part of the collaboration, the Google Gemini logo will appear on the team’s training kit and the same AI tool will be used to analyze the team’s plays, form, performance and statistics.

“It’s not just about opening the door to AI, it’s about understanding its true limits while improving the experience at the same time,” says Google spokesman Flor Sabatini.

During the tournament, players and coaching staff will have access to AI models to break down play and analyze opponent statistics and, in theory, reduce the time it takes to put this analysis into practice on the pitch. Google hasn’t provided precise details on the internal tools Argentina will use, but the intention is clear: The World Cup will be a stress test for Google’s AI in the high-pressure environment of professional soccer.

For fans, the proposal is more realistic and, in some ways, more ambitious. Google’s search engine will be reconfigured to function like its fellow fan, with AI-generated answers to real-time queries, analysis of key plays and in-depth statistics. It will also allow fans to create songs, memes, animations and other visual content to encourage social media engagement during and after each match.

According to Google, the search giant ended its deal with Argentina last March, but did not announce it until May in order to continue negotiating with other teams. Although Google has focused the media on Argentina — likely because of high-profile players like Lionel Messi — the company has also struck deals with Brazil and France, two other teams that have lifted the World Cup.

For Google, the World Cup is the most important cultural event of the year, Sabatini says. She stressed that “the passion that the Argentine national team arouses goes beyond Argentines. It is a shared feeling.” From the Argentine Football Association’s point of view, the agreement represents an injection of modernity into an organization that, like most teams, navigates between footballing traditions and the urgent need to monetize its brand.

This step has its risks. Bringing AI to World Cup arenas means exposing it to millions of simultaneous queries, diverse cultural contexts, and the inevitable fluctuations of individual match outcomes. If Gemini mixes up a stat, invents a lineup, or creates an image with a misplaced shield, the error will have a global level of exposure.

World Cup finals are traditionally culture-shaping events that accelerate the adoption of new technologies, from the popularization of color television to the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) to measure players’ training sessions to the use of video assistant referee (VAR) technology to resolve disputes over calls on the pitch. Now, it’s artificial intelligence.

The difference here is size. Never before has any technology company put its AI name on the chests of gamers and, at the same time, on the smartphones of millions of fans.

This story originally appeared on WIRED in Spanish It was translated from Spanish.