Chess.com is expanding its learning tools with Play Celebrity Coach, a new practice mode designed to help beginners learn fundamentals in a non-competitive setting.
Instead of text-only tutorials, players can now hear guidance directly from iconic voices and chess celebrities such as Hikaru Nakamura, Levy Rozman, and Magnus Carlsen. Those celebrities provide a sample voice, and Chess.com’s uses a generative AI tech from Eleven Labs to create voice based on a dialogue tree to provide automated answers to player queries.
The AI voices sound like, and they are in character too, said Gabe Jacobs, product manager at Chess.com, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“The idea is, you can pick a coach now on chess.com and when users sign up, they will pick a coach, and this coach is there to help you learn chess in many different ways, around the website and on the app,” Jacobs said. “But I think what’s really special about it is that we are partnering with some of the best chess players and chess coaches and chess influencers to be these coaches on chess.com.”
He added, “They will talk like themselves, using words that they use In real life, and they’ll also have the same voice. We’re using some voice cloning technology, and so it’s really cool.”
“They talk like themselves and use same voice and we are using voice cloning technology,” said Jacobs. “We demystify chess and are bringing their experience to chess.com.
Most importantly, Chess.com does this with the permission of the celebrities and it compensates them for it as well.
“Our mission is to demystify chess and make it more accessible to people, make it feel like anyone can play. That’s the mission of coach, to help people get into the game and fall in love with the game. And these people are have so much personality, and they’re so fun, and they’ve done so much for the chess world to get people interested in chess,” Jacobs said.
I listened to the voice of Magnus Carlsen and it sounded like him when I interviewed him in Saudi Arabia after the Esports World Cup.
The feature is powered by ElevenLabs Text to Speech and Voice Cloning, bringing the voices of these top creators and grandmasters directly into the product. This makes the learning experience more personal, engaging, and accessible to new players.
Play Celebrity Coach was designed to lower the barrier to entry by creating:
— A non-competitive learning environment where users can practice and request hints.
— Guidance from the trusted voices of creators they already follow on YouTube and Twitch.
The way it works is that Chess.com puts the source material into the voice cloning tech via its application programming interface. They get the voice in return and then apply it as needed to reactions to player moves in tutorial games.
Right now, the company uses 2D animated faces of the celebrities on the web site where players play the games. There are no animations yet.
“We have internal review and feedback systems to keep the quality high,” Jacobs said. “It’s a learning path that is approachable while still rooted in expert knowledge.”
Origins
The idea came from the fact that every chess fan has their favorite player or creator—and now, they can also be your favorite coach. From Game Review to Play Coach, you can personalize your Chess.com coaching experience with new star coaches.
A couple of years ago, Chess.com engaged with Eleven Labs to see how it could use technology to communicate to users. With chess, there are a load of things to learn in bringing players up to speed on competitive play and even basic play. But too many people had to look at screens or listen to recordings while trying to play on a screen.
Eleven Labs provides the voice cloning technology. Chess.com provides the source material for the coaches. Then they create a voice model on the platform, and then Chess.com hits the API with requests and it produces the right voice for the moment.
“Why should you be looking away from the board to read and learn when you can just look at the board and hear the information? So we started by prototyping in this app called Learn Chess with Dr Wolf, which is another app that’s owned by chess.com. It’s a great app for beginners. And we saw just amazing results.”
“You can take a lesson and just listen to a really soothing voice that sounded very realistic instead of reading. And the technology as you know, is just getting better and better,” Jacobs said. “We did tests and it sounds so real. We were able to create voice clones of these people like Magnus and Levy.”
You can now choose between GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, IMs Levy Rozman, Danny Rensch, WFM Anna Cramling, and sisters WFM Alexandra and Andrea Botez as your Chess.com coach.
If you have sound enabled for your coach, you’ll notice that they’ll speak with you as they help you improve and play chess. You’ll also notice that each coach has their own unique way of communicating with you.
You can choose your favorite coach by clicking the coach avatar anywhere on Chess.com. You’ll see your coach avatar on pages like Game Review, Puzzles, Lessons, or Play Coach. You can also change your coach on the Coach Settings page, or choose a coach and play against them by clicking the button below.
All members have Coach David selected by default. Clicking his avatar on the top right of your screen will bring up the menu where you can choose between all our coaches. You just need to select the coach you want and hit the “Choose Coach” button.
Your coach will be there to help you improve during the Game Review. This means that you now have the privilege of hearing Andrea Botez screaming at you while reviewing your mistakes, or enjoy Levy celebrating your amazing sacrifices.
You can also play against your favorite coach! And regardless of who you choose, you can adjust their playing strength—so this is your chance to finally beat Magnus.
“We’re ultimately trying to produce an experience where it feels like a real person online,” said Jacobs.
After the game is over, the coach can provide an analysis of your performance.
“Our secret sauce is our is our chess technology underlying it, which analyzes the board, analyzes the position for every move and gives us a lot of data,” Jacobs said.
The team reviews what the LLM produces fo accuracy.