AI chess images

The AI advances of recent years have spawned a wealth of impressive tools, from ChatGPT which creates human-like text, to AlphaZero which plays top-level chess. Another type of AI application that has become very popular is text-to-image models: they produce high-quality pictures based on a description in everyday language, as specified by the user. While many such image generators are available online, the best in my view is the Bing Image Creator aka Microsoft Designer, which employs the DALL-E model. Originally, I used this app to make some chess-themed wallpapers for my computer, but then it occurred to me that a favourite selection of such would make a nice addition to my chess graphics site, Virtual Pieces. So in lieu of the usual chess compositions for this blog, here are some examples of a very different type of chess art.

Access to Bing Image Creator is free, though it requires you to set up or sign in to a Microsoft account. There’s a daily limit on the number of images generated (it can be increased with a paid subscription), and all results are in a reasonably high resolution, 1024 x 1024 pixels. To create an image, enter the prompt or a description of the objects or scene, such as “colourful chess pieces with intricate patterns in digital 3D style”. Here’s an AI Art Prompting Guide that offers some good advice on how to use the tool. The sample images below reflect my preferences, but the AI is capable of rendering all sorts of styles – anything from classical paintings to Japanese animations. Later I might add a set of chess players drawn in the styles of certain famous artists.

Go to the AI images page of the Virtual Pieces site to download the full collection of 32 chess-themed pictures in the maximum resolution. They are divided into four sets: (1) Chess Players, (2) Fractals and Steampunk, (3) Blue-silver Pieces, and (4) Mixed Pieces. Two images from each group are shown below, and you can click on any to view it at full size.