Word.ws English Dictionary

AI winter

AI winter noun: a period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research.

Noun

AI winter (plural AI winters)

  1. (artificial intelligence) A period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research.
    • A lot of people are talking about — actually have been talking about — a particular scenario of the artificial intelligence industry known as the "AI Winter."1985, AI Trends, volumes 2-3, page 3
    • Their products offered little business value at the time, and so the commercial enthusiasm ended in disappointment, leading to a period now referred to as the “A.I. Winter.”2016 July 17, John Markoff, “Artificial Intelligence Swarms Silicon Valley on Wings and Wheels”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of AI winter

pluralAI winters

Origin of AI winter

By analogy to the idea of a nuclear winter.

Questions about AI winter

What does AI winter mean?
AI winter means a period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research.
What part of speech is AI winter?
AI winter is a noun.
What is the plural of AI winter?
The plural of AI winter is AI winters.

Words near AI winter in the dictionary

  1. AI psychosis
  2. AI slop
  3. AI washing
  4. AI whisperer
  5. AI whisperers
  6. AI winter
  7. AI winters
  8. ai yah
  9. AI'd
  10. AI-complete
  11. AI-first

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: AI winter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “AI winter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ai_winter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.