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Notes -
There is a huge debate about playing online or against engines, and this could certainly come up in a conversation about the controversy. This requires another digression into some background on chess.
One major perennial discussion in the chess world is about time controls. That is, how much time do players have to think about their moves? There are a lot of different time controls out there that people use, and I'm certainly not going to cover the entire debate here. The most prestigious chess events are still 'classical' time control. This already gets confusing, because there's not just one single time control for classical, but there is somewhat of a range of possibilities that people generally view as 'classical'. For example, right now, both the open/women's candidates tournaments are happening. The open is using a time control of two hours with no increment for the first 40 moves, then an additional 30 minutes plus a 30 second increment added to your time for every move you made thereafter. The women's section is instead using 90 minutes plus a 30 second increment from the beginning through move 40, then an additional 30 minutes (still with increment) thereafter. But both of these time controls are still generally considered 'classical'.
Time controls are enough of a controversy that it is often cited as one of the issues that has driven a wedge between Magnus Carlsen (viewed by many as still the best player in the world) and FIDE, with Magnus giving up his title of classical world champion, participating in fewer FIDE events, and possibly(?) building groundwork for a competing organization to challenge FIDE. But that's an aside. All to say, they're a big deal.
Second is online vs. 'over-the-board'. Online chess has enabled a lot of people to play casually or even competitively. However, the online community is generally very skewed toward much faster time controls. I haven't checked the stats, but my sense is that online, blitz (approx 3-5min) is the most popular, followed by rapid (approx 10-25min) and bullet (approx 1min) in some order. There just aren't that many good players playing classical online (or honestly, that many players in general). There is huge controversy as to what extent playing much faster chess translates to success in slower chess. You can try out more ideas more quickly; you can train your instinctual or short-calculation skills; it may genuinely improve your play if you get into a time crunch in a classical game. But you don't get the experience of really sinking into a position and calculating deeply. It has not been uncommon in the current candidates tournament for players to invest 30-60 minutes on a single move that they think is critical. Recognizing when to use that sort of time and using it effectively is a skill that you simply cannot build playing blitz. But we've also seen some players get really really good at blitz first, and then eventually transition into playing quite good slow chess, so it's still a pretty open question of controversy concerning the relationship between them.
Moreover, there is a perception that cheaters (using engines) are much more prevalent online than at over-the-board events. It's already hard to find many people playing classical online; but if a bunch of them just sort of give up and start using engines anyway, are you really getting much that you wouldn't be getting by playing an engine? In fact, some people think that it's even worse if you're worried that your opponent is cheating. It's harder to stay focused; you're more likely to waste clock cycles thinking about whether they're using an engine or not rather than on the game.
That, then, brings us to engines. Engines are super super good. Much better than any human. Sometimes there are ways that you can play anti-computer chess, but even that is pretty hard. And they do not "think like humans". Top players certainly use engines to help come up with opening ideas, or they'll use them to help them improve some of their calculations, but there's somewhat of a fine line between looking at something the engine says and thinking, "Oh, that makes sense; I can maybe try to incorporate that idea into my thinking in some way in the future," and, "No dawg; even if you gave me an additional hour in a game, I am either not going to come up with that idea or not going to be able to calculate enough of it accurately to ever feel comfortable trying such a thing." Engines can help, but it is hotly contested concerning how they can help, what level players can get what kind of help from them, etc. The current classical world champion famously was not allowed to use engines at all for the first however many years of his development (I don't remember the exact number).
How to effectively use engines to prepare for human tournaments is difficult. Aside from using them sometimes for tactics or other ideas, they're probably most used in "prep", where a person makes some plans ahead of time for what they want to do in the opening phases of the game. This is notoriously difficult, even at the highest level. In this very candidates tournament, one of the most well-known players (because he's also a streamer) got into a situation where he had played his computer-driven prep, and at one point, his opponent played a move that wasn't in his prep. His next decision was a critical one, but the position was quite complicated. He spent like an hour and then played the wrong move. After the game he blamed himself and his team for not looking at that move in preparation. He thought that the position was "impossible to play" as a human, and this is one of those pitfalls that make working with engines hard. You can't download everything from the engine into your brain; you have to stop somewhere. Where do you stop? You have to be a highly skilled player with a sense of, "This is a position that I can probably figure out over-the-board," versus, "This position is absolute madness, and so if I'm not able to just memorize what the engine says, I probably won't be able to figure it out, and I may end up just lost."
All of this is very controversial on its own, and I get no sense whatsoever that these controversies are being propped up in some way to support a position on women's chess.
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