Below, you will find examples of ChatGPT citations in APA format. Keep in mind that instructors have differing opinions about student use of ChatGPT -- you should always defer to individual instructor guidelines and assignment prompts when writing your papers.
Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper
If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.
Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm (OpenAI) with a Reference List entry and the corresponding in-text citation.
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Examples: In-text When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023). Reference OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat |
You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.
The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:
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Reference: OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat In-text Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023) In-text Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023) |
Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.
Date: The date is the year of the version you used.
Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the above examples. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.
The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions.
Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.
URL: The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat.
Source: How to Cite ChatGPT (apa.org)
