Lionel Messi posted a chess-themed advertisement to his 517 million Instagram followers on Wednesday, October 21, showing him learning an opening from ChatGPT. The video garnered over a million likes and thousands of comments within hours, introducing the game to an enormous audience. Messi asked the AI to suggest an opening that matched his playing style, and ChatGPT recommended Goat Horns, a name playing on the GOAT label that has become synonymous with the football star.

The advertisement follows a pattern of Messi using ChatGPT in sponsored content. A partnership between Messi and OpenAI began before the World Cup, when he used the AI tool to imagine his hair in Argentina's national colors. The timing of this chess video comes two weeks after OpenAI released a more visual and interactive version of its chatbot, which appears to be the version featured in the demonstration.

Goat Horns is not an official opening name, though the moves themselves are legal and playable. The sequence shows 1.e4 a6 2.d4 c6 for Black, with Black's first response recognized as the St. George Defence. Strong players have concerns about the setup. The a6 move slows Black's development and gives White more control of the center, making it an unconventional choice at the highest levels of competition.

The video drew quick scrutiny from chess observers online. Some fans noticed that on the demonstration board, the king and queen for Black were swapped, with the queen on e8 and the king on d8. Reports suggest this error sparked jokes across social media and Reddit, though it remains unclear whether the AI or video production caused the mistake.

Messi is no stranger to chess in popular culture. In 2022, he appeared alongside Cristiano Ronaldo in a Louis Vuitton campaign photographed by Annie Leibovitz, playing chess. Fans identified the board position as coming from a 2017 Norway Chess game between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura. Messi is the second most followed person on Instagram, behind Ronaldo.