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

The third project is a mobile game called Coachella vs. The Game, where players control an astronaut and explore digital worlds based on festival artists. The team compared the idea to the games people could play before visiting a theme park, giving fans a way to explore the lineup before arriving at the festival.

“Typically, you're looking at six to 12 month development timelines to really push a high-quality experience. And that time has been shrunk significantly, even just since the beginning of this year,” Kevin McMahon, Coachella’s innovation partnerships lead, told Decrypt.

Asked why Coachella chose Google DeepMind over rivals like OpenAI or Anthropic, McMahon pointed to the company’s visual AI tools and existing relationship with the festival.

“For us, we live in a really visual world, and they have the best visual models,” he said. “We work with them across the festival, from our YouTube livestream, which is part of a Google relationship. We’ve found them to have really great models that are easy to use, and they’ve been shipping at a really fast rate. We’re excited to keep exploring with them.”

A Coachella experiment using Google DeepMind AI. Image: Coachella

The AI projects build on years of Coachella testing new technology to expand the festival beyond the event itself. In 2024, the festival launched Coachella Quests, a game on the Avalanche blockchain that let attendees complete challenges and earn perks through NFT stamps. That same year, Coachella launched Avalanche-based NFT passes and collectibles after its earlier Solana NFT partnership with FTX fell apart when the crypto exchange collapsed.

“An experience like Coachella Quest was a way for us to shine a light on things and say, ‘Hey, have you thought about this?’—without doing it in a boring menu kind of way,” McMahon said. “How do we make it interactive—a way to explore and discover at the festival—and give fans a chance to bump into each other and say, ‘Oh, you were going to see that thing or collect that thing too.’ Those happy accidents are something we continue to get really positive feedback on.”

Coachella has also invested in augmented reality experiences for livestream viewers. This year’s AR broadcasts included digital effects layered onto performances that were visible only to online audiences.

The current AI projects have not been launched publicly, and remain internal proofs of concept. Cenicola said Coachella is reviewing lessons from this year's festival before deciding what could roll out in future years.

“It's difficult right now to put a firm timeline on it,” he said. “We're in the phase where we're taking all the learnings from these three proofs-of-concept that we wrapped up last weekend and working with our team and with DeepMind to understand what the next steps are.”