In-Text Citations:
APA format uses an author-date citation system for in-text citations. Directly after a sentence or clause that uses AI research—but before the punctuation mark—put a parenthetical citation with the company that created the AI and the year you accessed it.
A common example of alliteration is the child’s tongue twister “Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers” (OpenAI, 2023).
If you reference the company’s name directly in the text, you need to add only the year. These are known as narrative citations.
A common example of alliteration, generated by ChatGPT from OpenAI, is the child’s tongue twister “Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers” (2023).
APA also requires a full citation in the reference list at the end of the paper, which is explained below.
Reference List:
For a full citation in the reference list, follow the formula below used for other algorithm-generated information. Pay close attention to punctuation, such as periods, parentheses, and brackets, and where you put them.
Company. (Year). AI Name (version) [Descriptor]. URL
The “descriptor” is just a quick description APA uses for all nonstandard sources—traditional sources like books or online articles don’t need them. You can write the descriptor in your own words, but feel free to use “Large language model” for ChatGPT-4.
Make sure you briefly explain the prompt so readers know how you accessed your information.
Example APA Citation:
In-text Citation:
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 Page Citation:
Reference
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
| Material Type | In-text Citation | Bibliography |
|---|---|---|
| A book | (Sapolsky, 2017) |
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books. |
|
Chapter in an edited book (If the chapter is from an authored book, use the book citation) |
(Dillard, 2020) |
Dillard, J. P. (2020). Currents in the study of persuasion. In M. B. Oliver, A. A. Raney, & J. Bryant (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (4th ed., pp. 115–129). Routledge. |
| An article in a print journal | (Weinstein, 2009) |
Weinstein, J. (2009). “The market in Plato’s Republic.” Classical Philology, 104(4), 439-458. |
| An article in an electronic journal | (Grady et al., 2019) |
Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185 |
| A website | (Bologna, 2019) |
Bologna, C. (2019, October 31). Why some people with anxiety love watching horror movies. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anxiety-love-watching-horror-movies_l_5d277587e4b02a5a5d57b59e |
These examples came from the Reference Examples page on the APA website or with permission from the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh.