Artificially intelligent AlphaGo, a programme developed by Google DeepMind, will play against 18-year-old Go World No 1 Ke Jie later this year, the Chinese Go Association has said. Ke had earlier claimed he could beat the DeepMind computer at the chinese boardgame. The association made the announcement at the 37th World Amateur Go Championship in Wuxi, China, according to Endgadget.com. They are in touch with Google and will set up the match before the year ends, they said.

In March, AlphaGo had won 4-1 against Korean Go grandmaster Lee Seedol, a contest that drew international interest and was hailed as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. The match was often compared to the legendary chess contest between Garry Kasparov and IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. Deep Blue won that battle.

Go is an abstract strategy game from China that dates back 2,500 years and is often considered more difficult than chess.