Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

If you want to know who will win the World Cup don’t ask ChatGPT

By Brad Rees CEO Mediacells

The new artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT lets humans have Q&A sessions with a chatbot and has attracted a voluminous audience of 1m+ users in five days. 

The most-talked-about chatbot instils in the newbie user that Google ‘first-time’ feeling, meaning that people are hooked and transformed into returning users from the outset.

The output ranges from Goldilocks and the Three Bears police reports to epic Hollywood-grade film scripts, visualised with the image-generating AI system known as Midjourney, like the badass visualisation of Kylian Mbappé illustrated a the top of this post.  

So Mediacells decided to test ChatGPT’s football skills by kicking off with a simple question that every football fan wants to know the answer to.

Who will win the World Cup?

Alas, the OpenAI large language model was self-consciously downbeat when presented with a crystal ball proposition, claiming no ability to predict or provide information on current events – so the betting industry are not in too much trouble, yet.

The OpenAI bot’s knowledge is based on the text that it has been nourished with to date, so we asked a sitter,

Who is the most well-paid footballer of all time?

With similar reticence, the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (the GPT bit) would not commit, listing too many complex factors, like salary, team, performance, endorsements and more.

Like an awkward schoolmaster, keen to rid his classroom of a persistently annoying student, Chat-GPT conceded that some of the highest-paid footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Neymar Jr. and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have all earned significant amounts of money through their careers.

Tentative but accurate so far.

Next, we pumped the prototype general-purpose chat interface with an easy one,

Who is the most popular footballer on Instagram?

The cyber-sigh was almost audible, before the chatbot disabused us, stating for the record that it/he/she/they is/are not able to browse the internet or access current information.

However, it decided it could tell us that Instagram is a popular social media platform that is often used by footballers to connect with their fans and share updates about their lives and careers. #NoSS

Chat-GPT went on to list, in order, the top three audience-attracting players Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Neymar Jr. 

The emoji-shrugging bot reiterated that without access to current information, it/he/she/they cannot provide a definitive answer to the Instagram footballer question.

Thankfully readers can enjoy quantifiable answers to social-commercial media queries and on the day we will know who will play Argentina in the final of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 – Mediacells run down ten of the most popular posts by World Cup superstar.

#10. England’s Trent Alexander-Arnold and team-mate Jude Bellingham are out on a stroll in Qatar. The post attracts 1.75 million engagements on Instagram from the Melwood Grandmaster’s 8 million+ fans.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClmKapPK3Gn/

#9. Belgium’s Kevin de Bruyne says farewell to his ‘Capi’ Eden Hazard in front of his 20 million fans with a ‘fun times’ World Cup gallery and attracts 1.8 million engagements on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl3aQ0fDYec/

#8. Belgium’s Eden Hazard says ‘merci’ but ‘au revoir’ to his 27 million fans, attracting 1.9 million engagements on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl3N7y6N6Jr/

#7. Uruguay’s Luis Suarez bows out with a bitter-sweet post to his 45 million fans which attracts 2 million+ engagements on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Clrqnmro8HE/
#6. Absent Sergio Ramos was still Spain’s most engaged ‘player’ when he posted his magnanimous ‘so proud’ message to his team mates in front of his 54 million fans, attracting 3m engagements on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl2D4d2K-lu/
#5. Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi’s tribute to his mother attracts 3.7m engagements in front of his 12.5m fans on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CleNCl2slfy/
#4. Injured Karim Benzema sad-shares with his 62 million fans, attracting 4.7 million engagements – but he may still return for the World Cup final!

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClKPtLPrnL7/

#3. Kylian Mbappé’s ‘belle victoire’ post in front of his 77 million fans attracts 5.8 million engagements on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ClwYTZ_srYA/
#2. Defeated Neymar’s emotional outpouring attracts 22 million engagements from his 194 million fans on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl_hjP2oG_z/
#1. Join winners Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo attract a total of 74 million engagements in the two identical paid posts, to a combined follower base of nearly 1 billion fans.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJqVDBtRsq/

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJqW1ZtmIl/

It was the perfect product placement by Louis Vuitton with an ‘iconic’ shot by renowned portrait photographer Annie Liebovitz. LV brokered a paid collaboration between the two most famous football players on the planet. As official trophy trunk supplier to the £15m World Cup travel victory is not just a state of mind.