Low-temperature band-to-band photoluminescence of GaAs and AlGaAs excited by the 514.5 nm line of an argon ion laser beam was used as a probe to measure the temperature at the focused laser spot. A combined study of the dependence of band-gap energy on increasing laser power density and temperature was undertaken. The band-gap variation with temperature has been correlated with laser induced temperature at the focused laser spot as a function of laser power density. The induced temperature is lower than anticipated from the theories for cw laser heating. This disagreement can be explained by the contribution of photoexcited carriers to the thermal conductivity, which is not considered by theories available for laser heating in semiconductors.