Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere these days. Writing articles, designing logos, even attempting legal briefs or teaching you how to cook. It raises an intriguing question for the chess world, could an AI model like ChatGPT simply “steal” all recorded human chess games and provide them for free, undermining professional databases like Opening Master or ChessBase?
The short answer is no. Here’s why.
Why Large Language Models Can’t Replace Chess Databases
While AI models process massive amounts of text and patterns, they do not store or replicate structured datasets or databases. Chess games are not just creative text snippets, they are structured, chronological, and require huge metadata such as layer names, tournaments, dates, ECO codes, and curation. That is not millions, but billions of ones and zeros.
Data Access
Proprietary databases like Opening Master with 10.2 million human chess games, built since 2004, are not publicly available. Without licensing, AI has no access. Individual games are free on the market because it is considered "event" free of IP. But somebody has been collecting the games monthly last 20 years, there is IP and no OPENAI should be able to just "borrow it".
Precision Matters
With design or text, “close enough” might work. But with chess databases, one wrong move order or missing annotation renders the data useless. AI cannot guess its way into an exact 10-million-game set. It cannot talk it out or halucinate like it does when you speak.
IP Protection
Even though individual chess moves are not copyrightable, the compilation of games is protected as a database. Wholesale copying would be infringement. So while AI may generate synthetic games or approximate famous encounters, it cannot replace a professional, continuously updated, and error-checked database.
Where AI Does Add Value
Instead of competing with chess databases, AI can enhance them.
Game Annotation - Explaining moves in plain language for club players.
Trend Prediction - Identifying opening novelties and frequency shifts across years.
Training Insights - Tailoring prep to an individual’s style or weaknesses.
Opening Master has already been exploring this frontier, aiming not just to be the largest chess archive but the smartest chess companion.
Magnus Carlsen vs. ChatGPT5. Have you seen it?
In the exhibition earlier this year, World Champion Magnus Carlsen faced ChatGPT5, not as a search engine, but as a player. Unlike Stockfish or AlphaZero, ChatGPT is not optimized for perfect chess calculation. It learns patterns from vast amounts of text, including annotated games.
The result? Magnus still won comfortably. The model played coherent openings and middlegame structures, but its lack of depth quickly showed. A few superficial mistakes in calculation were enough for the Norwegian to convert the game with ease.
But the symbolic meaning is clear
For the first time, a language model could sit across the board, recognize openings, and play a full game.
Chess, once considered a domain only for dedicated engines, is now being sampled by general AI. And it learns fast.
AI cannot — and will not — “steal” curated chess databases like Opening Master. What it can do is partner with them, offering insights and new learning pathways for players worldwide.
As for Magnus vs. ChatGPT5? It reminds us that while language models are impressive, the human factor still prevails. For now, the world champion sleeps easy but the fusion of structured chess data and AI creativity might soon reshape how we learn, analyze, and play the royal game.
What do you think? Should AI be trained on curated chess data to help amateurs learn faster, or should professional databases remain the gold standard?
We think, YES.
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