Coinbase AI sends false breaking news alert about match that hadn't started yet

Coinbase AI Sends Mass "Breaking News" Alert That's Completely Hallucinated

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Crypto marketplace Coinbase is under fire after sending out an AI-generated breaking news alert that Norway's national men's soccer team had clinched a spot in the quarter finals of the ongoing FIFA World Cup by beating Brazil 3-2 -- before the game even started. While Norway did eventually beat Brazil -- with a final score of 2-1, contrary to what Coinbase's AI claimed -- the glaring error didn't sit well with netizens, particularly considering Coinbase had struck a partnership with prediction markets app Kalshi. A hallucinated news alert could've caused bettors to lose out, a panic triggered by an entirely made-up World Cup match outcome. It's also baffling considering how long companies have been dealing with this exact problem. Since the dawn of large language model-based tools like ChatGPT, the bots have been confidently telling lies and fabricating facts. That's despite hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on the tech's development. Combined with a growing obsession over prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, it's a fatal mix that could trigger plenty of chaos, as experts warn of a surge in gambling addiction. Puzzled users on social media noticed Coinbase's AI hallucination, calling out the company for the "dangerous and irresponsible" flub. "Taking a look with the team," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted in response to the embarrassing slip up. "Thanks for reporting it." The company's head of consumer products, Max Branzburg, claimed hours later that "we fixed the incorrect story and made some updates to avoid these types of inaccuracies in the future." Despite the significant humiliation, Branzburg gloated about the "power of AI-enabled 24/7 insights for trading," while conceding that Coinbase "obviously" still needs to "tune it to address these types of issues." The executive even had the gall to take credit for getting certain things right, arguing that "Norway did win and [star player Erling] Haaland did score 2 goals, so maybe the AI knew something we didn't!" Needless to say, it's a bizarre argument, considering the AI was completely wrong about the outcome of the game before it even started. The crypto firm is far from the last to have sent out entirely incorrect new alerts. In perhaps the worst error, Apple was forced to pull an AI feature that consistently delivered bogus news alerts to iPhone users in January of last year. The BBC had filed a formal complaint after the AI falsely told users that Luigi Mangione, who stands accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself. Mangione is very much alive to this day and awaiting his federal trial, which was recently postponed to January 2027. Norway's soccer team is set to take on England on Saturday, July 11, in Miami.

An AI Told Millions Norway Won. The Match Hadn't Started | PYMNTS.com

And on July 5, a Coinbase AI system told millions of users that Norway had beaten Brazil 3-2 in a match that had not yet started, according to CNET. The alert came from Trends, an AI-generated news feature inside Coinbase's prediction market app that surfaces news summaries alongside real-time market data, CoinDesk reported. Coinbase's own market page showed the game under a weather delay at the time. Screenshots spread across X within hours, drawing thousands of views. Max Branzburg, Coinbase's head of consumer products, later wrote that the company had fixed the error and updated its systems. "It's awesome to see the power of AI-enabled 24/7 insights for trading," Branzburg wrote on X, "but obviously still need to tune it to address these types of issues." What followed made the incident stranger. Norway did beat Brazil, winning 2-1 with Erling Haaland scoring twice in the second half, ESPN reported. The AI had identified the right winner and the right scorer. It had invented the score, the timing and the certainty, and delivered all of it as confirmed news to users with active positions on the outcome. Probability vs Certainty: How Two AI Systems Handled the Same Tournament The contrast with how Opta approaches the same tournament captures the difference between calibrated forecasting and confident fabrication. Opta's supercomputer has run 25,000 simulations per stage to estimate each team's probability of winning, Opta Analyst reported. Entering the quarterfinals and as of July 9, France leads at 27.3%, followed by Spain at 21.3%, Argentina at 17.3% and England at 16.5%. Norway sits at 6.6%. Every number comes with a stated uncertainty. The model distributes probability across outcomes. It does not declare one. That is what Coinbase's system failed to do. A model that says France wins the World Cup in 27.3% of 25,000 simulations is a forecasting tool. A model that declares Norway beat Brazil 3-2 before kickoff is presenting a fabrication as fact. The gap between them is not model quality. It is whether the system was designed to communicate uncertainty or to suppress it. The reliance runs deeper than one bad alert. Coinbase has said roughly 40% of its daily code is now AI-generated, with plans to push that figure higher, CoinPedia reported. Coinbase Error Exposes What Happens When AI Skips Uncertainty Sports predictions are low stakes compared to where the same failure mode appears in financial services. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 60% of financial services firms use AI for credit risk assessment and scoring, with 85% increasing their AI budgets over the next 12 months. Fraud detection, risk assessment and revenue forecasting are the dominant use cases, the same applications where a confident but fabricated output causes the most damage. When a model makes an error in a financial workflow, money moves incorrectly at speed across thousands or millions of transactions before anyone detects the problem. AI forecasting is only as reliable as what it is willing to say it does not know. Coinbase learned that on July 5. The quarterfinals begin Thursday afternoon (July 9). For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.