How to Cite AI Tools Such as ChatGPT: General Formats and Cautions

A fast-changing area

Generative AI tools can produce text, images, and code in response to a prompt, and students increasingly want to know how to acknowledge them. The guidance in this area is still developing. Style organizations have published recommendations, and many have updated them more than once. Universities and individual instructors have also set their own rules, and some allow AI use only in limited ways. For these reasons, treat everything in this guide as a general orientation rather than a final authority.

The first step is to read your course policy. If it forbids using AI tools for an assignment, no citation can fix that. If it allows them, it may ask for a statement describing how you used the tool, in addition to or instead of a formal citation. When in doubt, ask your instructor in writing and keep their answer. Then consult the current manual for your style, because it may have changed since this guide was written.

What information to record

Whichever style you follow, the information you need is similar. Record the name of the tool and the company or organization that makes it. Record the version or model name if the tool shows one, and the date you used it. Record the exact prompt you gave, and the date and time of the response if your instructor wants that level of detail. Keep the full output, either as a saved file or as a screenshot, because the same prompt can give different answers at a later time, and nobody else can reproduce your exact result.

Also note any link the tool provides to a shared conversation, if the tool offers one and your instructor accepts such links. Some tools do not give stable links, in which case a reader will not be able to retrieve the exchange. Several style guides therefore suggest describing the prompt in your text, or adding the output in an appendix, so the reader can see what you saw.

Keep this record from the start. It is difficult to reconstruct later, and it helps you separate your own thinking from machine-generated material.

General patterns across styles

Style guides have taken somewhat different approaches. Some treat the tool's company as the author, the tool name and version as the title, and the tool's web address as the source. Others suggest treating the exchange as a form of personal communication or as software output, which affects whether it appears in the reference list at all. Some advise using an in-text citation or a note without a list entry. Because these approaches differ, and because they have been revised, check the current manual for your style and any updates it publishes.

A general pattern might look like Company or Developer. (Year). Name of tool (Version) [Large language model]. link, with an in-text citation giving the company and the year. In MLA, a common idea is to cite the prompt as the title, with the tool name as the container and the company as the publisher, plus the date and link. In Chicago, a note often describes the tool, the prompt, the company, and the date. In Harvard, institutions may supply their own patterns or ask you to follow the closest existing one. All of this is subject to change, so verify before use.

In every case, a citation shows what tool produced the output. It does not make the output correct.

Using AI responsibly

A citation is not a license to rely on a tool's claims. Language models can produce confident statements that are wrong, and they can invent sources, quotations, or data. Never cite a source that you have only seen mentioned by an AI tool. Find the original source yourself, read it, and cite that. If you cannot find it, assume it may not exist.

Be clear about how much of your work is yours. If a tool helped you brainstorm, outline, or edit, many instructors want a short statement saying so, even when the final text is your own. If a tool produced sentences that you include or lightly edit, treat those sentences as quoted material and mark them accordingly, if your instructor permits it at all.

Also think about privacy. Do not paste personal data, confidential material, or other people's unpublished work into a tool unless you are sure the rules allow it. These choices go beyond citation, but they are part of using these tools honestly.

Keeping your approach flexible

Because guidance changes, build habits that survive change. Save your records, write down which manual or policy you consulted and when, and be ready to revise your citation if the rules are updated before your final submission. If you work with a citation generator, check whether its AI format matches the current manual, since generators may lag behind style updates.

When the rules are unclear, a short note in your paper explaining what you did can help. For example, you might say which tool you used, for what purpose, and how you verified its output. This kind of transparency is generally valued, even where the formal citation rules are still unsettled.

Finally, treat your instructor as the final authority for your course, and the official manual as the authority for your style. This guide is intended to help you ask the right questions and collect the right information, not to replace either of them.

It also helps to review your own work before submitting. Read each passage that was shaped by a tool and ask whether you understand it well enough to defend it in conversation. If you could not explain a claim or a sentence to your instructor without the tool in front of you, that is a sign to revisit it, check it against reliable sources, and rewrite it in your own words with proper acknowledgment.

Frequently asked questions