How do I cite ChatGPT in APA 7?

All three style guides changed their advice between 2023 and 2025, mostly because shareable conversation links appeared and made some chats retrievable. Check the guide's own site rather than a summary, since the versions circulating in course handbooks are often the first 2023 wording.

The underlying problem the guides are solving is that a chat is usually not retrievable. If a reader cannot open what you cited, the citation cannot do its main job. That is why Chicago keeps unshared conversations out of the bibliography and treats them like personal communication, and why APA now distinguishes a specific shared chat from the tool in general.

The practical implication is to preserve the evidence yourself. Save the conversation, note the model and the date, and record the prompts. If a shareable link exists, generate one. Doing this at the time costs seconds and turns an uncitable exchange into something a reader can check.

One thing all three guides agree on, and it is the most important point on this page: when the model points you at a source, cite the source, not the model. Find it, read it, confirm it says what was claimed, and cite it directly. MLA states this explicitly and warns that secondary sources named by a tool must be vetted.

Citing a chat and disclosing that you used one are separate requirements, and the venue decides which applies. A comparison of editorial policies found that ICMJE, WAME, COPE, NEJM, The Lancet, Nature, BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, Cell, and JKMS all require disclosure of AI use and all refuse to list an AI tool as an author, while Science adds two requirements of its own, prohibiting AI-generated citations and asking for the tool name, version, and prompt in the specified submission materials (Yoo, 2025, p. 6).

How do I cite an AI tool in MLA 9 and Chicago?

MLA does not treat the tool as an author. Describe the generated content or the prompt as the title, name the tool as the container, the version, the developer, the date, and the URL. Chicago credits the tool in the text or a note, and keeps it out of the bibliography unless a public link exists.

Chicago's example note form is a text-generated-by construction naming the tool, the developer, and the date, with the prompt included if it is not already in your text. Where you edited the output, Chicago asks you to say so.

MLA has separate guidance on describing AI use beyond citation, which matters when the tool assisted with editing or translation rather than producing quoted content.

Should a chat be cited or described in the methods?

Both, doing different jobs. A citation identifies retrievable content. A methods or acknowledgment statement explains how the tool affected the work, which is what publishers actually require. If the tool shaped the research rather than supplying a quotation, the statement matters more than the citation.

For a thesis, the statement is usually what your regulations ask for, and several universities now specify where it goes, in some cases immediately after the abstract. Check your own institution's wording rather than adapting a journal's.

Keep the two consistent. A methods statement describing extensive use alongside a single citation of one chat looks like an incomplete account, and the reverse looks like over-formalizing a trivial use.

To decide what the statement has to cover, Mehta and colleagues propose a checklist with three domains, conceptual contributions, linguistic assistance, and research assistance (Mehta et al., 2026, p. 1). Their examples allow language editing and clarity work provided you review every change for a shift in meaning, and allow AI-assisted search or statistical suggestions only when you verify the results, record the decisions you made, and disclose the assistance (Mehta et al., 2026, p. 4). Sorting your own use into those three domains gives you the content of the statement.

Do not assume one statement transfers. Yoo reports a real disagreement between venues, since some prohibit AI-generated text outright while others permit specific uses as long as you disclose them transparently, and the requirements differ from one journal to the next (Yoo, 2025, p. 6). Write to the policy of the venue you are submitting to, and check it again if you submit somewhere else. Across all of them, the responsibility for accuracy and integrity stays with you, and the tool is never an author (Yoo, 2025, p. 6).