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 deal with “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 develop an artist’s canvas, give them extra instruments for artistic expression, develop artist world constructing on web site and at house, after which make the expertise extra easy and extra enjoyable for followers,” Ryan Cenicola, Coachella’s innovation manufacturing lead, informed Decrypt.

One prototype, referred to as “Turning Performances Into Interactive Experiences,” captures dwell reveals and rebuilds them as 3D environments that followers can discover. In the course of 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 “dwelling archives” of performances that followers can stroll via, replay from completely different views, or view with alternate visuals generated in actual time.

“There are positively methods we’re 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 enthusiastic about this content material dwelling and making it an much more immersive expertise for followers on-site.”

A second prototype is a stage-design device 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 situations.  The purpose is to present smaller acts entry to manufacturing instruments sometimes reserved for artists with bigger budgets and groups.



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

“Sometimes, you are six to 12 month growth timelines to actually push a high-quality expertise. And that point has been shrunk considerably, even simply because the starting of this 12 months,” Kevin McMahon, Coachella’s innovation partnerships lead, informed 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 very 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 are straightforward to make use of, they usually’ve been delivery at a very quick price. We’re excited to maintain exploring with them.”

The AI tasks construct on years of Coachella testing new expertise to develop the pageant past the occasion itself. In 2024, the pageant launched Coachella Quests, a sport on the Avalanche blockchain that allow attendees full challenges and earn perks via 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 alternate collapsed.

“An expertise like Coachella Quest was a manner for us to shine a light-weight on issues and say, ‘Hey, have you considered this?’—with out doing it in a boring menu sort of manner,” McMahon mentioned. “How can we make it interactive—a technique 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 completely satisfied accidents are one thing we proceed to get actually constructive 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 tasks 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 grasp what the following steps are.”