Coinbase’s AI-generated news system picked a weird time to go rogue. Over the weekend, it sent users an alert claiming Norway beat Brazil 3-2 in a World Cup knockout match. Erling Haaland scored twice, apparently. Problem: the game hadn’t kicked off yet.
The notification went out Sunday and screenshots spread fast on X. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he was looking into it. Max Branzburg, the company’s head of consumer products, confirmed they’d fixed the error and updated their systems.
“It’s awesome to see the power of AI-enabled 24/7 insights for trading, but obviously still need to tune it to address these types of issues,” Branzburg wrote.
Here’s the funny part. Norway did win. Haaland did score twice. Just 2-1, not 3-2. Branzburg joked the AI “knew something we didn’t.”
This comes as Coinbase pushes hard beyond crypto trading. They’ve rolled out AI tools, prediction markets through Kalshi, and AI agents that can autonomously interact with blockchain apps. The whole idea is 24/7 automated insights for traders. The execution — well, it’s still being tuned.
Hallucinations aren’t new in AI. But a hallucinated sports score that goes out as a push notification to users? That’s the kind of error that erodes trust fast, especially for a company running prediction markets where accurate information matters.
Coinbase declined to comment further. They pointed back to Branzburg’s post. The systems got updated. Whether that’s enough — guess we’ll see next match day.
