AI for Academic Success: Tools, Ethics, and Best Practices

The following information is taken verbatim from: APA Style. Visit this page for more information on citing AI in text and reference lists in APA style.

"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 literature reviews or 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." 

Example:

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, 2025).

Reference

OpenAI. (2025, October 1). Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor? [Generative AI chat]. ChatGPT.

https://chat.openai.com/chat

Author. (Year, month day). Title of chat in italics [Description, such as Generative AI chat]. Source and/or Model. URL

The following information is taken verbatim from: MLA Style Center. Visit this page for more information on citing AI according to the Modern Language Association citation style.

Author
We do not recommend treating the AI tool as an author. This recommendation follows the policies developed by various publishers, including Cambridge University Press, the partner publisher of the MLA’s journal PMLA.

Title of Source
Describe what was generated by the AI tool. This may involve including information about the prompt in the Title of Source element if you have not done so in the text. 

Title of Container
Use the Title of Container element to name the AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT).

Version
Name the specific AI model or model version as specifically as possible. For instance, the examples in this post were developed using the GPT-4o model of ChatGPT.

Publisher
Name the company that made the tool.

Date
Give the date the content was generated.

Location
Give the stable, shareable URL for accessing the generated content (e.g., text, an image, etc.). For example, tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E allow you to share a link by clicking the Share link at the top of the chat conversation. If the tool you are using doesn’t provide a stable, shareable URL, provide the general URL for the tool.

Works Cited

"Tell me about confirmation bias" prompt. ChatGPT, model GPT-4o, OpenAI, 12 Apr. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat 

"Title of Source" prompt. AI platform, Version, Company, Date of your prompt: Day Month Year, URL 

The following information is taken verbatim from: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0422.html.  Visit this page for more information on citing AI according to the The Chicago Manual of Style.

Many scholarly publishers are requiring its identification though also requiring human authors to take responsibility for it and will not permit the AI to have “authorship.”

You do need to credit ChatGPT and similar tools whenever you use the text that they generate in your own work. But for most types of writing, you can simply acknowledge the AI tool in your text (e.g., “The following recipe for pizza dough was generated by ChatGPT”).

If you need a more formal citation—for example, for a student paper or for a research article—a numbered footnote or endnote might look like this:

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

ChatGPT stands in as “author” of the content, and OpenAI (the company that developed ChatGPT) is the publisher or sponsor, followed by the date the text was generated. After that, the URL tells us where the ChatGPT tool may be found, but because readers can’t necessarily get to the cited content (see below), that URL isn’t an essential element of the citation.

If the prompt hasn’t been included in the text, it can be included in the note:

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

If you’ve edited the AI-generated text, you should say so in the text or at the end of the note (e.g., “edited for style and content”). But you don’t need to say, for example, that you’ve applied smart quotes or adjusted the font; changes like those can be imposed silently (see CMOS 13.7 and 13.8).

If you’re using author-date instead of notes, any information not in the text would be placed in a parenthetical text reference. For example, “(ChatGPT, March 7, 2023).”