How to Cite ChatGPT and Other AI Tools

How to Cite ChatGPT and AI Tools: Quick Answer

If readers can open the conversation, cite that chat. If they cannot, APA cites the tool as software and describes the use in the text; MLA still starts with a description of the prompt; Chicago credits the tool in the text or a note and adds a bibliography line only when a public URL exists. Record the company, the generation date, the chat title or prompt, the model when the tool shows one, and a public share URL when one exists. Citation is not permission: if the syllabus bans AI, do not use it.

Do not list ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini as a human author in APA or MLA. Do not paste a private chat URL that requires your login. Do not copy the 2023 APA line that put (Mar 14 version) after ChatGPT—APA withdrew that default in 2025. Do not treat an AI summary, a Google AI Overview, or a hallucinated citation as a source for a book or article you never opened. A filled-in form lives on the ChatGPT & AI citation generator.

What This Guide Covers (and What It Does Not)

This is a source-type guide for text, images, and code generated by a chatbot or image model. It compares the three styles students are usually assigned and flags the journal-authorship rule that a course paper does not cancel. It is not a software manual, a permission slip, or a substitute for the one-style pages.

• Use this page to choose APA 7, MLA 9, or Chicago 18 and to see the official worked examples side by side.
• Use How to Cite ChatGPT in APA, MLA, or Chicago when you already know the style and want only that template.
• Use How to Avoid Plagiarism when the question is whether unmarked AI output counts as academic dishonesty.
• Use Paraphrasing vs. Quoting when you are deciding how to weave a generated sentence into a paragraph.
• Use Which Citation Style Should I Use? when the syllabus has not named a style yet.

Cite the Chat, Cite the Tool, Disclose, or Cite Nothing?

APA’s 2025 update exists because chats are now shareable. In 2023 the APA Style team treated ChatGPT as unretrievable software. The September 9, 2025 post by Timothy McAdoo, Samantha Denneny, and Chelsea Lee changed that: a public share link plus a chat title is a normal author–date–title–source reference. MLA already wanted a description of the prompt; the August 13, 2025 revision now prefers a stable share URL and a model name such as GPT-4o. Chicago 18 §14.112 still treats most chatbot output like a personal communication: credit it where it appears; add a bibliography line only when a public URL exists. A Google AI Overview is a different case: MLA says it is search results, not a work.

APA 7th Edition (September 2025 Guidance)

APA 7 still uses the four reference elements in Publication Manual Chapter 9. For a shared chat the author is the company (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity AI), the date is the day the chat occurred or ended, the title is the chat title in italic sentence case plus a bracketed description, and the source is the tool or model name plus the share URL. The software template in §10.10 is what you use when you cite the tool as a whole. The current instructional pages are Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and AI references. The 2023 How to cite ChatGPT post is historical.

Official APA template

Official APA shared-chat examples

To write those examples, the APA Style team asked four tools for grammar topics a student should know by the end of high school. The prompt they reported was “I’d like a list of grammar topics that a student should understand by the time they graduate from high school.” Use these lines as published. Do not invent a share URL.

Official APA general-tool examples

Cite the tool as a whole when a specific chat would be unhelpful, unethical, or private—for example after you used AI to edit your own sentences, or when listing every participant chat would break confidentiality. The date is the year the tool was last updated, not the day you opened it. APA’s September 2025 post says ChatGPT had last been updated in August 2025, so that reference uses 2025.

Prompts belong in the Method, not the reference

APA’s 2025 post separates the chat title (a reference element you may edit inside the tool) from the prompt trail (what you asked, then refined). Keep the full prompt history in your notes. Put a useful prompt in the Method, an appendix, or a supplement. Do not try to squeeze it into the four reference elements.

APA failure modes students actually hit

• Chat title, not the prompt, goes in the reference. Describe prompts in the Method section, an appendix, or a supplement. They are not a fifth reference element.
• No version number by default. The 2023 advice to write ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) is retired. Name the model (ChatGPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Flash) when the tool shows one. Add a parenthetical version only if the product still prints one.
• Company is the author. OpenAI, not ChatGPT; Google, not Gemini. APA’s reason is consent and responsibility, not branding.
• A share link that still needs your login is not retrievable. Treat that chat as undocumented software: cite the tool generally and keep the transcript in your records.
• Do not cite AI for a fact you have not checked. Verify claims against a published source and cite that source. APA is a documentation style, not a license to outsource evidence.

APA Parts 2 and 3: Search, Software, and Permission

Part 1 is the reference shape. Part 2 covers AI used as a search engine and AI built into ordinary software. Part 3 answers the question students actually type: “Is AI allowed in APA Style?” APA does not grant permission. The instructor, department, or publisher does. A correct reference cannot legalize a banned tool.

• Search or intermediary use. If you used a chatbot the way you use Google or a database—to find a page you then opened—cite the published source. Part 2 treats that path like an ordinary search. Keep a note of the tool if your method section needs to say how you found the literature.
• AI inside Word, Docs, or Canva. APA’s software rule in §10.10 already skips common programs. Part 2 extends that to an assistant sitting inside those programs. A grammar pass in Copilot-in-Word is usually disclosure territory, not a ChatGPT-style reference. A standalone Copilot chat you quoted is still a chat.
• Google AI Overviews. Click the source icon and cite the page. Do not put “Google AI Overview” in the reference list. MLA’s October 2024 note below says the same thing in different words: search results are not a work.
• Allowed is not binary. Part 3 says some tools and some tasks may be approved while others are not. Brainstorming a research question, summarizing an article you also read, and submitting generated prose as your own writing are three different permissions.

MLA 9th Edition (August 2025 Guidance)

MLA 9 uses the core-elements template in the MLA Handbook. The updated Style Center post (published 13 August 2025) keeps the 2023 rule that the tool is not an author, then changes two details: put a model name such as GPT-4o in the Version slot, and prefer a stable share URL in Location. If the tool cannot share, use the general tool URL. Acknowledge editing, translation, or other functional uses in a note or the text even when you are not quoting output. For uses that go beyond a single citation, see Beyond Citation: Describing AI Use in Your Work.

Official MLA text example

The 2025 examples replace the 2023 Great Gatsby green-light chat. The Style Center asked ChatGPT (GPT-4o) about nature in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and published both the generated sentence and the works-cited line. The in-text pointer shortens to the start of that description.

A shorter description is also allowed. The Style Center’s own alternative is Theme of nature in Austen’s Mansfield Park prompt when the conversation had several turns.

Official MLA image and creative-text examples

Secondary sources, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews

If Copilot or ChatGPT points at Britannica, a journal, or a book, open that source and cite it directly. The Style Center’s 2025 note is that models hallucinate citations and mis-summarize the pages they do link. An AI overview is a research conduit, not a substitute for the page. See MLA Handbook 9 §§5.28–5.29 for descriptions used as titles and §5.34 when a tool is only a path to another work.

The same post warns that an Overview can scrape a sentence that the original page used as a counter-example. Their scare-quotes case: the line “I ‘liked’ her post on Facebook” appears in the source as an example of when not to use scare quotes. That is why you open the page. For uses that are not a single quoted passage—ideation, drafting help, learning the tool—MLA’s Beyond Citation post says citation is not enough. Describe where the AI stopped and you began.

Chicago 18th Edition

Chicago’s public Style Q&A still gives the clearest official wording, and the published notes now use 10 January 2026 plus a Share-button URL. CMOS 18 §14.112 folds the same idea into the manual: credit generated words or images where they appear; treat an unshareable chat like a personal communication (§14.111); add a bibliography or reference-list line only when a public URL exists. In a note the tool stands in as author and the company as publisher. Author-date puts leftover facts in a parenthetical.

DePaul University Library and Georgetown University Library both quote CMOS 18 §14.112 on bibliography treatment. The complete sentence they print is the one that students miss:

Official Chicago note examples (January 2026)

These are the Q&A’s published notes. The older March 7, 2023 lines are retired. CMOS says replace the word URL with the address copied from OpenAI’s Share button. If you have no public link, stop after the date. If you edited the output, add edited for style and content. Silent changes such as smart quotes do not need a note (CMOS 12.7–12.8).

Chicago 18 share URL and bibliography

When a conversation is publicly retrievable, CMOS 18 lets you treat it more like other web content. A labelled template—not an invented chat—looks like this. Put the bibliography under the company if your instructor wants a list entry. Do not invent a chatgpt.com/share/ address.

Journal Papers: ICMJE January 2026

A student paper and a journal manuscript are not the same permission. The ICMJE Recommendations (updated January 2026, §II.A.4 and Section V) bind medical and many science journals. Chicago’s Q&A also points authors to the COPE position on authorship and AI tools (13 February 2023). Both say the same thing the citation styles already said: the tool is not an author, and the human is responsible for every sentence.

ICMJE also tells authors where to disclose: writing assistance goes in the acknowledgment (§II.A.3); data collection, analysis, or figure generation goes in the Methods (§IV.A.3.d); both the cover letter and the manuscript must say that AI was used. Nondisclosure can be treated as misconduct. That is stricter than a course paper that only wants a Chicago note.

Images, Code, and Editing

The same three styles split generated artifacts from hidden assistance. A DALL-E or Midjourney image that appears in the paper needs a caption or a figure note (MLA §1.7; CMOS 18 §3.38 if you adapted it). Code you kept after a model rewrote it belongs in the method or a repository note. Copy-editing that never enters the paper as someone else’s sentences is usually a disclosure, not a full citation—APA’s general-tool reference plus a Method sentence is enough; MLA wants that functional use acknowledged; Chicago can do it in a sentence.

What to Save When the Chat Cannot Be Shared

Private school accounts, deleted threads, and tools with no Share button leave readers unable to recover the output. Keep the prompt, the full reply, the model name, and the date in your research notes or an appendix your instructor can request. APA then uses the general software reference. MLA still lists a description plus the general tool URL. Chicago stays in the text or a note. None of those formats turns a banned tool into an allowed one. Journal authors must still disclose the tool in the cover letter even when no share URL exists.

Related Guides

• How to Cite ChatGPT in APA
• How to Cite ChatGPT in MLA
• How to Cite ChatGPT in Chicago
• How to Avoid Plagiarism
• Paraphrasing vs. Quoting
• Which Citation Style Should I Use?
• APA vs MLA