This Google feature let me design my own chess set — and play against my toughest opponent yet

One of my favorite techniques for stimulating my brain is to engage in logic puzzles and games. I’ve been dabbling more in AI on the side as another stimulating activity.

I recently came across a combination that uses AI to create my own personal chess set. Google’s GenChess feature lets you create custom chess pieces using generative AI (via the Imagen 3 AI model and Gemini Flash).

As part of this feature, Google included a built-in chess game mode that lets you play your customized chessboard pieces against AI opponents.

GenChess is easily accessible on any device with a web browser, including Chromebooks, tablets, and phones.

What you can do with GenChess

How to sign up for it and use it

GenChess is still a Google Labs experiment feature. To access GenChess, you must opt into the Google Labs experiment via a Google account in good standing.

After you’ve signed up using an account, you can begin using GenChess from any web browser.

It technically works on any device that supports a web browser. However, after testing, I prefer using it on larger screens (my desktop and Chromebook), as it was a lot easier to see the details of newly created chess pieces.

When you open the GenChess website, you can choose between “classic” and “creative” for your chess pieces.

If you opt for classic, you can still add themes to your pieces, but it won’t stray outside the boundaries of the design and coloring, as the AI will still primarily use traditional-looking chess pieces for your set.

After a few prompts, I found the classic option to be too vanilla, so I selected the creative one instead.

When using the creative option, you can have the AI randomly generate pieces for you. Alternatively, you can enter a word to have pieces made based on that word.

The first prompt I tried using was “pop stars,” which led the AI to create iconic themes related to pop stars (it should restrict the use of real people).

I liked the results, as most of my pieces came out colorful and glittery, which screams “pop stars” all around.

Second, I chose Honkai Star Rail (I tried Honkai: Star Rail, but the AI doesn’t recognize a colon in the prompt).

The results were slightly mixed. It featured generic-looking enemies that resembled the Anti-Matter Legion, but besides that, it didn’t lean into anything game-specific.

I thought it would be a fun experiment to do since Cerydra, a skill support who is all about chessboard motifs, had recently dropped into the game.

As a simple test to see if a more specific prompt would help, I used my second prompt to see if it would recognize Cerydra from Honkai: Star Rail, but it was unsuccessful.

However, Cerydra may be too new and specific. So I entered “Honkai Star Rail characters” as my third prompt. It led to generic-looking monster pieces again.

I tried two more gaming culture references. I selected Genshin Impact as one of them. I used the “Genshin Impact character” as the prompt. Surprisingly, it did give me one character for my king piece, which was Zhongli. But the rest were duds.

The other gaming theme I tried was Final Fantasy. The series has been around since the 1980s, so there should be plenty of material (data) to work with compared to the HoYoverse titles I’ve been using.

The results were not bad. I recognized half of the pieces (Shiva, a Moogle, and a Chocobo).

I regenerated the king a few times to see if it would make a difference (I was hoping I’d get Ifrit), since it would thematically work well with Shiva.

That’s where I wish I could set individual prompts for each chess piece to help guide the AI into getting the exact chess piece I wanted for my set.

Other issues I noticed are that the sizing can be off. Almost like some pieces are oversized compared to others, some of my kings were very giant, and it looked silly to have them parked on my chessboard.

You can regenerate or edit individual pieces, which alleviates the sizing problem, but it still doesn’t always correct it.

Also, I wish there were a way to retrieve the exact pieces the AI generated for my opponent.

For example, I liked the Legend of Zelda set more than my Final Fantasy set, but there was no way the AI could reproduce those exact pieces it used.

GenChess shows the fun side of AI

It does it without the added stress

As someone who has had a lukewarm reception to AI since its emergence, I’ve begun to explore its features more.

Part of my lukewarm reception with AI isn’t so much about the features. It’s about the privacy concern. I’m not comfortable with the idea of my information being stored and shared to improve the AI model.

So I’ve been much more restrictive and careful with how I use AI, mainly focusing on necessary (non-confidential) productivity prompts from ChatGPT and Gemini.

Outside of that, I haven’t been using it for fun until I began experimenting with Google’s GenChess feature.

According to the policy on the GenChess website:

This means that Google still tracks your activity on the site, but it doesn’t save your creations.

It’s not a bad compromise, since you can get creative and personal with your assets without feeling completely spied on.

But that doesn’t mean you should ask it to create inappropriate content for your chess pieces. Plus, it is well within Google’s policy to train AI models to produce content that aligns with their Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy.

Playing GenChess needs work

I spent a lot of time creating a custom chess set. However, the least enjoyable aspect was the unbalanced gameplay against the AI.

The AI didn’t make as many calculated moves, and thus, some matches were made too easy to win against.

But I also encountered very tough matches. Five minutes is too short for matches, but ten minutes is too long. I wish I could tweak the timer to design my perfect match length.

I also wish there was a better way to share my custom chess set with other people or even have people spectate in my matches.

If Google can make its AI tool more interactive with real people, that would make GenChess a lot more engaging (and less niche).