Google likes to experiment with artificial intelligence. It has had live DJ tools, podcast creators, and ways to create custom lettering. Now, Google engineers are turning their attention to the world of chess with GenChess, a new effort that lets you design custom pieces using Imagen models. [GenChess is built on top of Google DeepMind's Imagen 3 artificial intelligence image generation model. It has also powered image generation in the ImageFX experiment and the Gemini chatbot. It is a very impressive model capable of creating everything from photorealism to design.

You can create classic chess sets that are true to their original form, or creative chess sets with a bit more experimental design. After you create your own, the AI can come up with an appropriate competitor set and time the game.

GenChess uses AI to personalize the 1500-year-old game and provides an easy way to create custom sets. They can then play against the computer.

To customize the set, the Imagen 3 AI image generation model and some clever prompting techniques are used. The first prompt is fairly limited; Google provides the bulk of the prompts, but you can switch between Classic and Creative and add a description at the end.

What I like about it is that it also tries to create a match. When I gave it Mars as a prompt, it generated a set of opponents that reflected Venus. When I gave it a dog on the beach, it produced a cat on the catwalk as an opponent.

Being a millennial and a member of the chess club at school, I couldn't resist creating a set that looked like avocado toast. Google gave me bacon and eggs as my opponent. I lost the game.