Yoko Ono Launches Playable Online Chess Bot. Artsy

Chess has introduced a Yoko Ono bot built around the artist's 1966 work“Play It By Trust,” translating one of conceptual art's most elegant provocations into an online game. The feature uses an all-white board and all-white pieces, echoing the original work's unsettling logic: once the familiar black-versus-white distinction disappears, the game becomes harder to track, and the player's sense of orientation begins to slip.

The launch was timed to Ono's 93rd birthday and shared by Ono earlier this week, aligning the rollout with the recent online release of“War Is Over!” (2023), the Academy Award-winning animated short inspired by the music of John Lennon and Ono. Chess is presenting the bot not only as a novelty, but as a way to encounter a work that has long been read through the lenses of war, identity, and mutual recognition.

First shown in 1966 at London's Indica Gallery under the title“White Chess Set,” the piece reframes chess by removing the visual cues that normally organize the board. Ono's own inscription describes it as“a chess set for playing as long as you can remember where all your pieces are,” a line that captures both the work's wit and its quiet instability. The game does not simply ask players to win; it asks them to remember, distinguish, and persist.

Chess also linked the launch to“War Is Over!,” in which two soldiers on opposing sides connect through chess. On its website, the company noted that the game functions in the film as a symbol of empathy and communication across conflict. That connection gives the bot a broader frame: it is not just a digital adaptation of a famous artwork, but part of a continuing conversation between play, politics, and perception.

The Ono bot joins a growing roster of celebrity and culture-driven bots on Chess, including ones modeled on DJ Steve Aoki and tennis player Carlos Alcaraz. Yet this collaboration stands apart because it draws directly from a participatory artwork that has remained remarkably durable. More than half a century after its debut,“Play It By Trust” still tests how much of a game depends on rules - and how much depends on what we are able to see, remember, and trust.

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