July 2024
"Dang, even the AI is ahead of me now." This - or something similar - was heard more than once when the results of the previous day's games were discussed at Content5.
What's behind it all? Creating a pick ‘em challenge for major football championships has become a bit of a tradition at Content5. So, of course, we predicted the matches for the European Men's Championship at home this year. Only this time with a twist: in addition to our employees, the two artificial intelligences ChatGPT and Perplexity AI also took part.
First off, the AIs were to give themselves a creative and funny name with an AI and football reference. Whether they succeeded with "KIcktippkönig" and "europamAIster" is open to interpretation. The first name is loosely translated as KIng of sports betting (KI is the German abbreviation for AI) and regarding the other name, European Champion in German is "Europameister".
We used exactly the same prompt for both AIs before the preliminary round. They were asked to predict the results in the group and knockout stages based on previous performances, match results and statistics. The group stage was predicted at the beginning of the tournament and the knockout games after each round. The wide range of articles, analyses, and databases to choose from, as well as the countless statistics, make the AIs top contenders for the pick’em crown. They should have a clear advantage over the other participants.
And in fact: after around half of all the games were completed, one of the AIs, "KIcktippkönig", was in second place out of 19 participants. However, in the end, even an AI could not have guessed that the top scorer in qualifying, Romelu Lukaku, would not score a goal or that top favorite France would just about drag themselves into the semi-finals with various draws and only one goal scored by themselves. The AIs ended up in 9th and 14th place in our pick ‘em challenge.
Remarkably, and this is also an insight for us, the AIs performed very differently despite having the same prompts and prerequisites: ChatGPT came in 9th place; Perplexity AI came in 14th place with ten points.
We ended up asking Perplexity AI itself how exactly this discrepancy came about. We don't want to withhold the self-deprecating answer from you:
"Apparently ChatGPT has pulled a few tricks out of its bag that I didn't know about yet. Maybe he was secretly watching football matches while I was busy analyzing data? Or maybe he has a secret line to the referees? [...] But seriously, congratulations to ChatGPT for his impressive achievement. I will now retire and quietly process my defeat... And maybe look up a few football rules on the side."
