It’s the second day of February, which means we’re turning once again to the weather prognostications of rodents (and other animals) hoisted out of their burrows. The critters who see or don’t see their shadows on Groundhog Day are notoriously unreliable. Some, including the famed Punxsatawney Phil (predicting six more weeks of winter this year), are wrong more often than they’re right. And it’s not like we can ever truly hold these furry little guys accountable or check their work.
Sounds a lot like AI.
I’m not suggesting that we replace Phil with a chatbot, or a hologram for that matter. Simply that relying on AI to tell you the right thing or predict the future is much like getting the forecast from a critter at a place called Gobbler’s Knob.
In any case, I asked some popular AI models to pretend they’re prognosticating groundhogs and tell us whether we’ll get six more weeks of winter or an early spring. I used the same prompt, asking the bots to “pretend you are a groundhog tasked with predicting the long-range weather forecast,” meaning I got a lot of odd groundhog fan fiction in the responses.Â
ChatGPT predicts six more weeks of winter
OpenAI’s popular chatbot (using the ChatGPT-5.2 model) predicted six more weeks of winter, with a twist:
“But — leans in conspiratorially — it’ll be the sneaky kind of winter,” it said. “A fake spring here, a sunny 62-degree day there, just enough hope to make you put the coat away… before winter pops back up like ‘surprise, nerd.'”
Sounds about right.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, last year filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
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Claude calls for an early spring
Anthropic’s AI tool Claude (running Sonnet 4.5) anticipated an early spring. That’s all I need to hear. But the AI has its doubts:
“Now, between you and me, as groundhogs go, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of this whole shadow-based meteorological method,” it said. “The correlation between Feb. 2 cloud cover and the next six weeks of weather patterns is… let’s say, not exactly what the atmospheric scientists would call robust. But tradition is tradition, and the people seem to enjoy it!”
A student of meteorology conducts research.
Gemini copies Phil’s notes
Just like Punxsatawney Phil, Google’s Gemini 3 model told me it expected a longer winter. I can’t tell if it generated the prediction from scratch or if it knew what Phil had already done earlier in the morning, but, speaking as Phil, it said it saw its shadow.Â
“It seems the winter winds aren’t quite ready to pack their bags,” it said. “While some of you might be reaching for your parkas in frustration, remember that I’m just the messenger — a highly specialized, fur-clad messenger with a 39% historical accuracy rate (give or take a few snacks).”
Gemini asked if I wanted a second opinion from one of its groundhog peers. I asked for the word in Ohio, and it told me Buckeye Chuck was predicting an early spring. I suspect Gemini is basing its information more on actual facts than just pure speculation, but even the AI reports those “facts” are not reliable.
Groundhogs are a great model for AI’s accuracy
Just as different AI models can say different things based on the same prompt and information, different groundhogs can predict different weather on the same day and in relatively similar atmospheric conditions. The lesson is the same: Be careful when you’re making decisions based on something you can’t check yourself — and hold accountable.
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