Lionel Messi asked ChatGPT to teach him a chess opening that matched his style. It suggested one called the "GOAT Horns", a nod to his nickname, greatest of all time. The ad went up on his Instagram this week, in front of more than 517 million followers.
Chess fans spotted the problem within hours. On the board shown in the ad, each side's king and queen were standing in each other's places.
Why one swap matters
In real chess, each queen starts on a square of her own colour, with the king next to her. Swap them and the game changes. Decrypt reports that on the wrong board, the GOAT Horns moves (1.e4 a6 2.d4 c6) open a path for White's queen and allow checkmate on move four, about as fast as a game of chess can be lost. On a correctly set board, the same moves do not lose like that.
How people reacted
The post collected around 1.9 million likes and 19,600 comments in about a day, according to Decrypt. On Reddit, one user asked how nobody looked at it "for less than 5 seconds before sending it to the whole world". Others on the r/chess forum said an earlier OpenAI ad also had a queen on the wrong square.
Decrypt says OpenAI used a corrected board in a separate version of the ad posted on X, while the original video stayed up on Messi's Instagram.
Is the opening any good?
Even on a proper board, chess players are not fans. Chess.com notes that "Goat Horns" is not an official opening and that AI chatbots have a history of bad chess advice. The chess site Planchetto looked at real online games and found the moves are playable but hand the other player a small head start.
Why it matters
Millions of people now use chatbots as tutors, for homework, languages, cooking and games. They sound sure of themselves even when the basics are wrong. If the most famous footballer alive, a global ad campaign and a team of reviewers can miss a swapped king, so can anyone learning alone at home.
The fix is simple and old fashioned: check the first step ourselves. In chess, that means setting up the board.
