ASIAN 371: Topics in Chinese Literature: Journey to the West and Creation of the Gods (Fall 2024) : Utilizing Generative AI

The APA (American Psychological Association) has not released official guidelines on citing generative AI; however, an April 2023 post on the official APA Style Blog provides the following guidance on citing ChatGPT (which could be adapted for other AI chatbots): 

• If you used ChatGPT in your research, describe how in your methods section.
• If you used ChatGPT in a literature review, describe how you used it and provide both the prompt you used and response in the text. 
• Depending on the scenario, you may also include the full text of prompts and responses in an appendix or in online supplementary materials. 

The blog post includes these examples for in-text citation and reference sections: 

In-text citation example:

(OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript)

Reference section example: 

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

The Chicago Manual of Style addresses citing ChatGPT and similar tools in an online Q&A. Guidance varies based on the system of Chicago style that you use. 

For Notes and Bibliography system system users:

Reference section example if including the full prompt in your text:

1. Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, March 7, 2023, https://chat.openai.com/chat.

Reference section example if not including the full prompt in your text: 

1. ChatGPT, response to “Explain how to make pizza dough from common household ingredients,” OpenAI, March 7, 2023.

For Author-Date system users: 

In-text citation example

(ChatGPT, March 7, 2023)

Reference section

Author-date system users should credit ChatGPT in the text or in a note and should not cite ChatGPT in a bibliography or reference list unless providing a publicly available URL to the prompt and generated text via a browser extension such as ShareGPT or A.I. Archive. 

MLA has released preliminary guidance for citing generative AI in different contexts. According to MLA, you should cite a generative AI tool when paraphrasing, quoting, or incorporating it into your work and acknowledge functional uses of the tool in your text or other location. Do not include an author in your citation and treat a description of the content as the title of the source, as if it were an article or chapter title. 

In-text citation example:

While the green light in The Great Gatsby might be said to chiefly symbolize four main things: optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed, and covetousness (“Describe the symbolism”), arguably the most important—the one that ties all four themes together—is greed.

Reference section example:

“Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.

For details on more specific uses, such as citing AI-generated visual works, AI-generated creative works such as poetry, and secondary sources cited by AI, please refer directly to MLA guidance.