MW We asked AI to fill out a March Madness bracket. It picked the type of Final Four that rarely happens.

By Weston Blasi

The AI era has arrived for March Madness brackets. But is it any better than DIY?

Artificial Intelligence can write your emails and your résumé, and even create a family budget for you, but can it help you win your March Madness pool?

Millions of Americans have been scrambling to finalize their men's and women's college basketball brackets ahead of the tip-offs of a weeks-long sporting spectacle that will see people wager billions of dollars.

For years, experts in college basketball and sports betting have attempted to improve forecasting in one of the most unpredictable sporting events in the world, and still nobody is believed to ever have recorded a perfect bracket, and the longest perfect-bracket game streak to start a tournament was 49 in a 67-game NCAA tourney.

If you didn't catch much college basketball this season, you might be looking for some help in filling out a bracket. But instead of looking to college basketball experts, whether on ESPN $(DIS)$ or in the next cubicle, AI, for some, is becoming a go-to prognosticator.

'The way people make sports bets today is somewhere between chaos and insanity. ... Gambling operators have had access to advanced analytics that enable them to create lines designed for their gain and your loss."Alan Levy, 4C Predictions

When prompted to predict the winners of each individual matchup while being "as accurate as possible" for the men's 2025 tournament, OpenAi's ChatGPT (GPT-4 model) put forth a bracket that featured a Final Four of Auburn, Kansas, Duke and Houston, with Duke winning the title. That's three No. 1 seeds, including Duke, the most popular choice to win the championship.

Similarly, Google's Gemini (Gemini 2.0 Flash), when given the same prompt, advanced a Final Four of Auburn, UConn, Duke and Houston, with Duke winning the title in the end. Again, three No. 1 seeds.

How do those predictions compare with what experts say about filling out brackets?

RJ Bell, the founder of betting site Pregame.com, has worked for decades in the betting industry while appearing in various radio and TV spots for Fox Sports and ESPN. Bell spoke with MarketWatch ahead of several previous NCAA tournaments and has offered this advice for fans:

-- Always advance No. 1 seeds in the first round.

-- Pick upsets early, but don't advance them too far.

-- No. 1 seeds aren't a guarantee to make the Final Four.

While the tournament is famously unpredictable, with "Cinderellas" emerging almost annually, it's so rare for No. 1 seeds to lose in the first round that it has only happened twice in the tournament's history.

Brackets from the large-language models, or LLMs, referenced earlier only partially followed that advice. These AI models had No. 1 seeds in every region almost always rolling through their brackets toward the Final Four, and they rarely picked upsets.

AI only predicted a few upsets in the first round, like No. 10 Utah State seed beating No. 7 seed UCLA, even as upsets like that are pretty common.

In addition, both had several No. 1 seeds advancing to the Final Four. While it may make conventional sense to advance top seeds through the tournament, a Final Four filled with No. 1 seeds rarely occurs. Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 (it's now 68, including the play-in round that wrapped up Wednesday night), there's only been one instance in which all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four, and only five times have three No. 1 seeds made it that far.

It's important to note that this is a baseline approach to getting an AI assist with your bracket, which relies on data on the internet and historical norms, among other information. Power AI users often spend time training or teaching an AI model to change its prediction types, perhaps favoring other data points, like betting lines over historical norms, for example.

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Regarding the picks AI gave us, while it's smart to advance No. 1 seeds to the Sweet 16, the Final Four is a different story. "One of the most common mistakes is being too optimistic about No. 1 seeds," Bell said.

Similarly, AI used by the sports betting site Sports Millions to fill out brackets also tended to side with top seeds early in the men's bracket. Its AI advanced two No. 1 seeds to the Final Four, and didn't pick many first-round upsets. It also generally favored schools with historical basketball pedigrees, even if they were lower seeds, like UConn, Marquette and Kansas.

"Our AI machine isn't giving us any major upsets in the First Round, with all the top seeds advancing comfortably," Joerg Nottebaum, director at Sports Millions, wrote to MarketWatch. "All top seeds are predicted to register wins with at least a 15-point difference, with both eventual winners Houston and Auburn winning 85 to 60."

4C Predictions, a marketplace for sports, stocks and politics, is even running a "Man vs. AI Bracket Challenge" where prominent sports bettor Sean Perry will have his bracket lined up against picks by the company's AI model.

"The way people make sports bets today is somewhere between chaos and insanity," said Alan Levy, co-founder and CEO of 4C Predictions. "Whether it's picking their March Madness brackets, the over-under of a football game, or the winner of a soccer game, gambling operators have had access to advanced analytics that enable them to create lines designed for their gain and your loss."

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But you don't have to fill out a bracket with an LLM to use AI. Several popular sports websites are now employing AI to help users fill out brackets, too, and some are offering customizability.

The CBS platform's AI allows users to create a bracket by autofilling it based on certain tendencies that include versions that favor "top seeds," "user favorites," "historical random" and "random."

Filling out a perfect bracket is nearly impossible: The odds are given as 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

It's so farfetched, in fact, that billionaire investor Warren Buffett has had an unclaimed offer of $1 billion on the table for years for anybody who fills out a perfect bracket.

In an effort to finally award prize money, the Berkshire Hathaway $(BRK.B)$ $(BRK.A)$ chief is now offering a $1 million prize for a bracket that accurately picks at least 30 of the men's tournament's first 32 games.

Read on: You can now make March Madness bets on Robinhood. Will regulators allow sports contracts at more brokerages?

-Weston Blasi

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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March 20, 2025 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)

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