Will AI Replace My Hobby? Evidence From Go, Chess and Music

Will AI Replace My Hobby?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has beaten human players at Go and chess, and Deezer says over half of its new uploads were fully AI-generated as of June 2026. None of that shows AI taking over anyone's hobby. One way to frame the question is to separate doing an activity from what it produces. This is the site's own framing. The Go and chess examples are about competition. The music example is about output, the tracks that get uploaded and streamed.

Each example below comes from a competitive, professional or platform setting. None is drawn from a hobbyist's own practice, so none of them tells you what happens to a hobby at home.

Go: The Lee Sedol Record

Lee Sedol's Wikipedia entry covers a professional Go player who lost a five-game series to Google's AlphaGo in March 2016, losing 1 to 4. Wikipedia reports that he won game 4 of that series.

On 19 November 2019, Lee Sedol announced his retirement from professional Go. Wikipedia quotes him saying, "Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated."

In December 2019 he played a three-game match against an AI system called HanDol. He won game 1, which was played with a two-stone handicap, but HanDol took the series 2 to 1.

Wikipedia also reports that in a 2024 interview he described losing to AI as devastating and said he could no longer enjoy the game. Wikipedia links that interview to his retirement. The interview came years after the 2019 announcement.

Chess: From Deep Blue to Centaur Chess

Garry Kasparov beat IBM's Deep Blue 4 to 2 in a match held February 10 to 17, 1996, in Philadelphia. The source for this is Wikipedia's article on Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov.

Deep Blue won the rematch 3.5 to 2.5. That match ran May 3 to 11, 1997, in New York City. After game 2, Kasparov accused IBM of cheating.

Wikipedia reports that later analysis tended to treat Kasparov's loss as the result of uncharacteristically bad play. The same analysis downplayed the intellectual value of a game that brute force can defeat. In a December 2016 podcast, Kasparov said modern chess engines easily surpass Deep Blue.

According to Wikipedia, Kasparov's loss also inspired Arimaa. Arimaa is a game designed to be hard for computers but playable with a chess set. Wikipedia's article on advanced chess describes advanced chess as chess in which each human player uses a computer chess engine to explore candidate moves, while "the human player controls and decides the game." The article also calls it cyborg or centaur chess. Garry Kasparov introduced it after losing the 1997 rematch, proposing that humans and computers cooperate.

The first advanced chess match was in June 1998 in Leon, Spain. Kasparov played Veselin Topalov, and both used Fritz 5 and ChessBase 7.0 in a six-game match with 60 minutes per player. It ended 3 to 3.

In the Infinity Chess Ultimate Challenge in 2017, a computer engine called Zor finished first. Thomas A. Anderson of Germany, the first human-centaur, finished third.

Each of these results comes from a competitive event. The sources do not report on casual play.

Music: AI Uploads on One Platform

According to Paste Magazine's July 22, 2026 report, Deezer says over 50% of new uploads to its platform were fully AI-generated as of June 2026, up from 44% in April.

Deezer also says about 90,000 new AI tracks are added each day.

Deezer says 85% of AI-generated music streams were fraudulent. It stopped paying royalties on those streams, will remove AI tracks directly linked to them, and will remove AI tracks that go six months or more without being streamed.

Deezer began tagging AI albums in June 2025. Deezer says it keeps AI music out of algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, and says it developed software to detect AI tracks.

Deezer's 50% figure covers new uploads only.

What These Examples Do Not Show

Wikipedia and Paste Magazine cover professional competition and one platform. Neither measures how hobbyists feel about AI, and none reports how many people still practice a hobby.

People disagree about whether AI-made work counts as creative, and neither Wikipedia nor Paste Magazine settles that question.

If you want to weigh this for your own hobby, three questions help:

• Is the part you care about the doing or the thing it produces? The Go and chess examples are about competition, and the music examples are about uploaded output.
• Does your hobby have a public ranking or match result? The Go and chess examples above are built on match results, and the 2017 Infinity Chess Ultimate Challenge ranked a computer engine first.
• Do you release your work on a streaming platform? Deezer's figures cover one platform's uploads, and Deezer says it keeps AI music out of algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists.

Options If You Want the Human Part Visible

If you want the human part of a hobby to stay visible, three pages on this site are a place to start.

• How to find non-AI art: use it to look for art made without AI.
• AI-free apps: use it to find tools that do not use AI.
• Human-made policy template: use it if you want a written rule about human-made work.

If the Worry Is About Your Job

If the worry is about paid work instead, the free Will AI Replace My Job tool takes a job title and returns a plain-English breakdown. It covers which tasks AI can replace, which parts are resilient, and which skills to build.

If you are choosing a line of work, see AI-proof jobs.

Related Reading

For more, see AI slop and AI art theft.