On January 1, 2023, Chess.com released a new AI bot called Mittens to destroy players' determination to play chess. It is a machine that has a lousy attitude and discourages the players from making them lose. When it was first released, the Chess.com players had a tough time defeating this newly created bot and were mainly dominated. Mittens was unlike other Chess.com bots as it had various social media accounts like Twitter and YouTube. 

 

The idea of the chess bot Mittens came from Will Whalen, a student from Hamilton College. The chess engine's personality was designed by a team led by a writer, Sean Becker. The bot's development can be traced back to the COVID pandemic, which boosted the popularity of Chess.com. When the Netflix series Queen's Gambit came out in 2020, it had incredible popularity. Hence, Chess.com made a bot characteristic of the main character, Beth Harmon, from the series. This made the Chess.com site more famous. Since this occurred, Chess.com has introduced new bots into the game per month, new sets of bots with different ideas and designs.

 

 

https://aibusiness.com/ml/meet-mittens-the-ai-chess-bot-players-love-to-hate

 

 

Their strategy of Mittens is to slowly gain an advantage in the game, like the playing style of a chess player named Anatoly Karpov. According to a chess grandmaster, this robot has flaws in its play and may sometimes miss the best move in a specific position. What is interesting about this bot is that it trash-talks the opponent. The trash talk that the bot uses is from the quotes of famous people like Vicent van Gogh, Robert Oppenheimer, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

 

https://www.chess.com/news/view/play-beth-harmon

 

 

Some great chess players, the grandmasters, started challenging themselves by trying to beat the newly founded bot. Hikaru Nakamura, a five-time US chess champion, faced the bot, Mittens, in his stream. In his stream, he faced up with the bot and got a draw with white at the end after massive losses of position during the game. He later uploaded a video on YouTube titled, "Mittens the chess bot will make you quit chess." Later a chess grandmaster, Ben Finegold, beat this bot in his stream.

 

After the Mittens, Chess.com released a series of other AIs. One of them includes the Luka. AI, which is based on the Dallas Mavericks basketball player and gets stronger based on the games he plays. Currently, other bots are based on the theme of Women's History Month, where different chess bots based on famous women in history, such as Jane Goodall, are there to compete with other chess players.