Temperature is a setting that controls how creative or predictable an AI’s answers are.
Illustration: AI-generated · AI Compare Ninja · CC BY 4.0
Example
For company name ideas you pick a high temperature, for a summary a low one.
For pros
Technically, temperature scales the probability distribution over the next tokens. It is usually only adjustable via the API or developer consoles. Many reasoning models do not accept it, or only at the default value; there you set the reasoning effort instead.
