There are ongoing discussions by scholarly publishers, universities, and your professors about whether you need to cite ChatGPT or other AI engines that you may have used. Be sure to talk to your professor about it, but most scholarly publishers are coming down on the side of you need to acknowledge that you used an AI engine.
It is not an author. It's a resource. So you would cite it as a resource.
Do not cite it as a source of factual information. Always fact check.
The author would be the company that created the AI engine, for ChatGPT, that's OpenAI. The title is the name of the AI engine. For ChatGPT, the version is shown on the bottom of the page. This is important to know as the engines are changing all the time. The descriptive text describes the type of engine.
| Format | OpenAI (Year). ChatGPT (Month Day version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com |
| Example | OpenAI (2023). ChatGPT (May 12 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com |
| In-text citation | (OpenAI, 2023) |
APA recommends that you could also include an appendix for the full text of any longer responses that you quote from. This is because ChatGPT creates a unique response each time.
| Format | "Text of prompt" prompt. ChatGPT, Day Month version, OpenAI, Day Month Year, chat.openai.com |
| Example | "Give me a summary of I, Robot" prompt. ChatGPT. May 12 version. OpenAI, 18 May 2023, chat.openai.com |
| In-text citation | ("Give me a summary") |
For a full explanation that covers generative AI engines for images and text, see the MLA Style Center
Chicago style recommends citing ChatGPT as a personal communication similar to an unpublished interview. This would mean including it as a footnote and not within the bibliography itself. This is because such works are not stable. The engines generate a new response to each prompt.
If your prompt is included within your document, the footnote would look like this:
1 Text generated by ChatGPT, May 18, 2023, OpenAI, https://chat.openai.com.
2 Chat GPT.
If your prompt is not included in the body of your text, the footnote would look like this:
1 ChatGPT, response to "Give me a summary of I, Robot," May 18, 2023, https://chat.openai.com.