Chess is experiencing unprecedented growth. With the release of the series “The Queen’s Game” on Netflix, but also the emergence of chess.com, this millennial strategy game is experiencing a true golden age. Champions Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura are treated like rock stars and the number of players is growing in double digits.
In order to ride this new wave of players and this sudden and unexpected interest in chess, Google wanted to launch its own variation of the game. If the rules are the same, the MenloPark firm wanted to stand out by using intelligence artificial.
An empty shell
As it knows how to do so well, the company wanted to use AI to facilitate the customization of games, in particular by giving users the choice of build the play pieces of their choice. An interesting feature, which would almost make us forget the rest.
Because if the customization of the pieces is an interesting aspect of this new chess game, Google’s version is seriously lacking in diversity. It is in fact possible to choose 3 difficulty levels, but also two time controllers. In other words, 6 different games are playable, before having visited the website. It’s little, very little even.
A science of timing
It must still be recognized that Google knows how to release a game at the right time. The application has just appeared on the web, while the final of the world chess championships is currently being held in Singapore. The Chinese title holder Ding Liren faces the young Indian nugget Gukesh Dommaraju. At 18 he could become the youngest world champion in history, dethroning a certain Kasparov.
Google is the main sponsor of the event for the occasion and the brand wants to make this ancestral game a symbol of the power of its AI. If in the early 90s the matches between Kasparov and Deep Blue shook the world, demonstrating the power of computing, Google now wants to integrate this power into all the world’s devices, notably with Gemini.
New features next month
Chess on Gemini is expected to arrive in December for Gemini Advanced subscribers. For now, the first tests have shown that Google’s AI has some limits. In particular, she was not able to find the best shots in complex positions and could fall into “traps” constructed by the best players on the planet.
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