At the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the Alibaba Tongyi Qianwen App launched a football prediction AI assistant on June 12 and made it available to all users. On the first day of the tournament, the assistant demonstrated high accuracy, successfully predicting the score and red card trend of the opening match where Mexico defeated South Africa 2:0, as well as accurately forecasting South Korea's 2:1 last-minute comeback victory over the Czech Republic. The assistant was called the "octopus" of the AI era by netizens.
According to Cheng Fei, the product manager of Tongyi Qianwen's AI prediction, the assistant is trained on massive data, and in addition to historical match records and player data, it innovatively incorporates geographic features, altitude, and weather data of the host locations. For example, in the opening match, the model fully considered the impact of the high altitude of over 2,200 meters in Mexico City on the visiting team.
The development team emphasized that AI aims to approach the limit of accuracy through technological optimization, but the charm of football lies in its unpredictability. In terms of commercial design, the product breaks traditional betting models. Users can not only win cash prizes worth tens of thousands of yuan, but also participate in interactive mechanisms with Tongyi Qianwen to build football fields for rural schools, achieving an in-depth integration of cutting-edge AI technology, sports competition, and social welfare.
