What is Temperature (in AI)?

Temperature is a setting that controls how predictable or varied an AI model's output is — low values stay focused and consistent, high values add creativity and surprise.

At each step a model has many possible next words ranked by likelihood. Temperature decides how boldly it strays from the safest pick: near zero it almost always takes the top choice, giving steady, repeatable answers; turned up, it samples more freely, producing more varied and inventive — but less predictable — text.

Match it to the job. For factual answers, extraction, code or anything you need to be consistent, keep temperature low. For brainstorming, names, taglines or creative drafts, a higher setting gives you range to choose from. Most chat tools hide this behind a sensible default, but knowing it exists explains why the same prompt can give a different answer twice.