Glossary
What is temperature in AI?
A dial for risk. Low keeps answers safe and predictable; high makes them surprising and creative.
When a model picks the next word it has a ranked list of options, each with a probability. Temperature controls how strictly it sticks to the top of that list. Low = almost always the safest, most likely word; high = more willing to gamble on rarer ones.
TEMPERATURE — HOW RANDOM THE CHOICE IS
Most chats live around 0.3–0.7. Turn it down for facts and code; up for brainstorming and variety.
At temperature 0 the same prompt gives almost the same answer every time; crank it up and it varies run to run. It doesn't make the model smarter — just more or less adventurous with each token a language model emits.
Related terms
Appears in these lessons
Feel the dial
Turn the temperature yourself
How AI Really Works lets you roll the dice on the next token and watch randomness change the output — free to try in the app.