Coachella Uses Google DeepMind AI to Test the Future of Live Entertainment

Coachella is popping one of many world’s largest music festivals into an AI testing floor.

The pageant collaborated with Google DeepMind throughout this 12 months’s occasion to construct and take a look at experimental instruments designed to alter how artists create performances and the way followers expertise them.

The brand new experiments give attention to “world fashions”—AI methods that generate interactive digital environments. Coachella’s innovation staff spent the 2026 pageant constructing three prototypes with Google DeepMind’s Mission Genie, the corporate’s world-model platform.

“We engaged on this challenge the place we’re working with their instruments to discover what are the ways in which these instruments can lengthen and broaden an artist’s canvas, give them extra instruments for artistic expression, broaden artist world constructing on web site and at dwelling, after which make the expertise extra easy and extra enjoyable for followers,” Ryan Cenicola, Coachella’s innovation manufacturing lead, instructed Decrypt.

One prototype, known as “Turning Performances Into Interactive Experiences,” captures dwell exhibits and rebuilds them as 3D environments that followers can discover. Through the first weekend of the pageant, groups recorded lighting, audio, visuals, and the motion of each the group and artists throughout a Quasar stage set, then recreated the efficiency in Unreal Engine.

Coachella mentioned the expertise might ultimately create “residing archives” of performances that followers can stroll by, replay from completely different views, or view with alternate visuals generated in actual time.

“There are positively methods we’re taking a look at how followers on-site can have interaction with that content material sooner or later,” Cenicola mentioned. “Wanting additional forward, with glasses and the emergence of that kind issue, that’s definitely a spot we’re fascinated by this content material residing and making it an much more immersive expertise for followers on-site.”

A second prototype is a stage-design software for artists. The software program lets performers add visuals or enter prompts to see how a present would look on a 3D mannequin of Coachella phases at completely different instances of day and with completely different crowd circumstances.  The aim is to present smaller acts entry to manufacturing instruments usually reserved for artists with bigger budgets and groups.



The third challenge is a cellular recreation known as Coachella vs. The Sport, the place gamers management an astronaut and discover digital worlds based mostly on pageant artists. The staff in contrast the concept to the video games individuals might play earlier than visiting a theme park, giving followers a strategy to discover the lineup earlier than arriving on the pageant.

“Usually, you are taking a look at six to 12 month growth timelines to essentially push a high-quality expertise. And that point has been shrunk considerably, even simply for the reason that starting of this 12 months,” Kevin McMahon, Coachella’s innovation partnerships lead, instructed Decrypt.

Requested why Coachella selected Google DeepMind over rivals like OpenAI or Anthropic, McMahon pointed to the corporate’s visible AI instruments and current relationship with the pageant.

“For us, we dwell in a extremely visible world, they usually have the most effective visible fashions,” he mentioned. “We work with them throughout the pageant, from our YouTube livestream, which is a part of a Google relationship. We’ve discovered them to have actually nice fashions which might be straightforward to make use of, they usually’ve been delivery at a extremely quick charge. We’re excited to maintain exploring with them.”

The AI initiatives construct on years of Coachella testing new expertise to broaden the pageant past the occasion itself. In 2024, the pageant launched Coachella Quests, a recreation on the Avalanche blockchain that allow attendees full challenges and earn perks by NFT stamps. That very same 12 months, Coachella launched Avalanche-based NFT passes and collectibles after its earlier Solana NFT partnership with FTX fell aside when the crypto trade collapsed.

“An expertise like Coachella Quest was a means for us to shine a lightweight on issues and say, ‘Hey, have you considered this?’—with out doing it in a boring menu form of means,” McMahon mentioned. “How can we make it interactive—a strategy to discover and uncover on the pageant—and provides followers an opportunity to stumble upon one another and say, ‘Oh, you have been going to see that factor or acquire that factor too.’ These pleased accidents are one thing we proceed to get actually optimistic suggestions on.”

Coachella has additionally invested in augmented actuality experiences for livestream viewers. This 12 months’s AR broadcasts included digital results layered onto performances that have been seen solely to on-line audiences.

The present AI initiatives haven’t been launched publicly, and stay inner proofs of idea. Cenicola mentioned Coachella is reviewing classes from this 12 months’s pageant earlier than deciding what might roll out in future years.

“It is tough proper now to place a agency timeline on it,” he mentioned. “We’re within the section the place we’re taking all of the learnings from these three proofs-of-concept that we wrapped up final weekend and dealing with our staff and with DeepMind to know what the subsequent steps are.”