Listen to this blog with one of our AI generated voices.

As we head into tonight’s “Sweet Sixteen” round of the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, it’s time to take stock of how one of the world’s leading sports analysts is doing in our competition that pits him, Stephen A. Smith of ESPN, against six generative AI tools.

In short, the man is still in the game and maybe has the best chance to win. But, it is going to take a come-from-behind victory to do so.

On the one hand, his bracket is trailing all the generative AI’s with just 39 points in the traditional scoring method where each win in the first round is 1 point and each win in the second round is 2 points. That’s right, he is dead last after the round of 32.

At the same time, he has the most points left to win with a whopping 124 points still remaining.

This indicates that the man was willing to pick some upsets in the early rounds, but selected a lot of high seeds to go the distance. Looking at his bracket, it turns out he has all 1’s and 2’s in the elite 8!

Importantly, he picked Florida, a #1 seed, to be his champion, which seems like a safe bet as it is one of the favorites to win it all.

That’s not something every AI could say.

In fact, only two of the AI’s picked a #1 seed, Précis and MSFT Copilot, who both picked Duke to win.

ChatGPT had Tennessee, a #2 seed winning it all.

Claude went with a #3, Iowa State, who is already out of the running after losing to Ole Miss in the Round of 32.

Perplexity went with Kansas, a traditional power, but just a #7 seed this year; and they didn’t even make it out of the first round, losing in an upset to #10 seed Arkansas.

Last, but not least, Google’s Gemini chose UConn, an #8 seed, as its champ, which turned out to be a big mistake since Connecticut already got bumped off by one of the tournament favorites, and Stephen A. Smith’s pick to win, Florida.

Check out the table of results following the Round of 32: