AI Glossary
What is temperature in AI?
Temperature: Temperature controls how predictable or adventurous a model’s word choices are — low means consistent and safe, high means varied and creative.
In plain English
At each step the model holds a ranked list of possible next words. Temperature decides how strictly it sticks to the top of that list. Low temperature: always the safest pick — same input, nearly same output. Higher temperature: it gambles further down the list, which reads as creativity (and occasionally as nonsense).
Why it matters
- Why the same prompt gives different answers on different runs
- Use low temperature for extraction and formatting, higher for brainstorming
- One of the few "dials" exposed to developers using AI APIs
A concrete example
Generating 20 product names? Turn temperature up. Extracting invoice totals into a table? Turn it to zero.
Related terms
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