All three big style guides now say how to cite ChatGPT and tools like it, and all three have changed their advice since 2023. The main change is the share link. A chat can now have its own address, so a reader can open the exact conversation you used, and the styles have moved towards citing it.
Two things matter more than the format. The first is whether your course lets you use an AI tool at all. The second is what an AI tool can be a source for. It can be cited for what it wrote. It is not a source for facts, and any references it offers need checking before they go near your list, which EdCitation's Verify references does free.
The formats below were checked in September 2026 against each publisher's own guidance, linked at the end.
Am I allowed to use ChatGPT in my paper at all?
That is decided by your course, not by the citation style. Writing for APA Style, McAdoo et al. (2025) say it in their opening paragraph: the instructor, the department and the publisher set the policies that decide which AI use is permitted and how it is to be disclosed.
So read the assignment before you open the tool. Look for a line on AI in the brief, the module handbook or the academic integrity policy. If there is none, ask. How to read an assignment brief and rubric shows where such rules tend to sit, and EdCitation's free Check your paper turns the brief into a checklist of its word limits, required sections, style and number of sources, so the AI line is not the only rule you read closely.
Where AI use is allowed, citing is only half of the duty. The other half is saying what you used the tool for. All three styles ask you to acknowledge uses such as editing or translating, in the text or in a note, even when you quote nothing.
How do I cite ChatGPT in APA 7?
APA 7 cites the company as the author, and since September 2025 it prefers a reference to the specific chat when the tool can share one. The pattern for a shared chat is:
AI Company. (Year, Month Day). Title of the chat [Generative AI chat]. Tool or Model Name. URL of the chat
APA's own example of a ChatGPT chat is:
OpenAI. (2025, August 21). High school grammar concepts [Generative AI chat]. ChatGPT. https://chatgpt.com/share/68a77b60-0ee4-800c-9acc-cd3fd573c311
In the text: (OpenAI, 2025), or OpenAI (2025) as part of your sentence. The date is the day the chat took place or ended. The four parts follow APA's usual order, author, date, title and source, with the company as author because a tool cannot take on the responsibilities of authorship.
Preparing a chat before you cite it
The reference is only as useful as the link, so do this before you close the tool:
- Rename the chat to something a reader will understand. The title in the reference is the chat's own title, and most tools let you edit it.
- Take the share link, not the address in your browser bar, which usually works only for you.
- Note the date the chat took place or ended, and the model you were using, such as ChatGPT-5 or Claude Sonnet 4.
- Open the link in a private window to check a stranger can read it.
- Keep your own copy of the exchange, in case the shared link is later removed and the reference is left with no source.
Citing the tool instead of one chat
When one chat would not help the reader, cite the tool in general. The pattern follows APA's format for software:
OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com/
Here the date is the year of the tool's most recent update, and the company is not repeated as the publisher, because the author and the publisher are the same. APA suggests this form when you used the tool to edit, organise or analyse your own writing, to translate, to refine code, or to produce a table or figure, and when citing every chat would be unhelpful or would expose material that should stay private, such as chats held with research participants.
Two details differ from older guides. APA no longer asks for a version number such as "Mar 14 version": give the model name if you know it, or only the tool's name. And the prompt is not part of the reference. Describe your prompts in the text, or put a long exchange in an appendix, because a prompt does not fit any of the four reference elements and does not help a reader retrieve anything.
How do I cite ChatGPT in MLA 9?
MLA 9 does not treat the AI tool as an author, so the entry opens with a description of what was generated. The tool's name goes in italics as the container, followed by the model, the company, the date the text was generated, and the link.
The MLA Style Center's own example is:
"Describe the theme of nature in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park" prompt. ChatGPT, model GPT-4o, OpenAI, 23 Sept. 2024, chatgpt.com/share/66f1b0a0-d704-8000-be9a-85f53c850607.
In the text, MLA uses a short form of that description in place of an author: ("Describe the theme"). There is no page number to give.
The Modern Language Association (2025) revised this advice in August 2025 in two ways. A stable, shareable link to the conversation is now preferred, and the tool's general address is used only when the tool cannot share a chat. And the Version slot should name the model as exactly as you can, which is why "model GPT-4o" appears in the example above.
How do I cite ChatGPT in Chicago style?
Chicago cites AI text in a numbered footnote or endnote, and says that in most kinds of writing it is enough to name the tool in your sentence. For a student paper the University of Chicago Press (n.d.) gives this form in its Q&A, which follows the 18th edition, where URL is the link from the chat's Share button:
- Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, January 10, 2026, URL.
If your text does not give the prompt, the note can carry it:
- ChatGPT, response to "Explain how to make pizza dough from common household ingredients," OpenAI, January 10, 2026, URL.
If you changed the generated text, say so in your sentence or at the end of the note, for example "edited for style and content". Chicago says small formatting changes need no note.
The Q&A shows notes only. McMaster University Library (n.d.), summarising section 14.112 of the 18th edition, says AI text is not usually listed in the bibliography or reference list. We could not find a bibliography form for AI in Chicago's own public guidance, so if your course uses Chicago author-date, or wants an entry for everything, ask your tutor which form to use rather than inventing one.
How do the three styles compare?
Each style answers the same questions in its own way: who counts as the author, where the citation goes, and what the link points to.
| APA 7 | MLA 9 | Chicago 18 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who is the author | The company, such as OpenAI | No author. The entry opens with a description of the prompt | ChatGPT is named first in the note, then OpenAI |
| Where it is cited | Reference list and in the text | Works cited list and in the text | A numbered note. Often only named in the sentence |
| In the text | (OpenAI, 2025) | ("Describe the theme") | A note number |
| The prompt | Described in the text or an appendix, never in the reference | Used as the description that opens the entry | In the note, if the text does not give it |
| Link | The shared chat, or the tool's address | The shared chat, or the tool's address | The shared chat |
| The sources the AI pointed you to | Cited as themselves, once read; Cite a source builds the entry from the record | The same, in MLA 9 form from Cite a source | The same; Cite a source builds Chicago 18 author-date entries, not notes |
The same patterns work for other tools. Change the company and the tool: Anthropic for Claude, Google for Gemini, Perplexity AI for Perplexity, Microsoft for Copilot.
When do I not need to cite AI at all?
When you used it as a search engine, and when it was built into ordinary software. McAdoo et al. (2025) set this out in a second post, on AI as a search engine and AI inside common software, and it is the part most students miss.
If you asked a tool to find sources and then read those sources yourself, cite the sources, not the tool. That is what you would do after a search on Google or in a library database. The same goes for AI inside everyday software: a word processor that suggests a rewrite, or a design tool that generates an image, is not cited, in the way that a spelling checker is not cited.
There are exceptions worth knowing. If you are writing a literature review or a systematic search and you describe your search strategy, name the AI tools you searched with and cite them, because a reader cannot judge the search otherwise. If an AI model is built into specialist equipment you used in an experiment, describe the equipment and the model in the text.
Why is an AI tool not a source for facts?
A language model writes text that is likely, not text that has been looked up. A citation to ChatGPT shows where your words came from. It does not show that the claim in them is true, and it does not count as evidence.
References show this most clearly. Walters and Wilder (2023) asked ChatGPT for 84 short papers on 42 topics, then checked all 636 references in them: 55% of the GPT-3.5 references did not exist at all, against 18% from GPT-4. Even among the real ones, substantive errors in the details remained in 43% from GPT-3.5 and 24% from GPT-4. Newer models are better than that, but not good enough to skip the check. Why AI tools invent references explains where the invention comes from.
Summaries fail more quietly. Peters and Chin-Yee (2025) compared 4,900 summaries from ten well-known models with the original papers and found the models almost five times likelier than human writers to widen a finding beyond what the study supported, with the worst models overgeneralising in 26% to 73% of cases. A sentence that is slightly too broad is much harder to spot than a reference that does not exist, and it is the kind of thing a marker with the original paper open will notice.
So when an AI answer points to sources, open those sources, read them, and cite them directly. If a claim matters to your argument, it needs a source a reader can check.
How do I check the references an AI tool gave me?
Look each one up in the publisher's record before it goes into your reference list. By hand, that means opening the DOI, searching the exact title, and checking that the authors and journal match. How to check whether a reference is real sets out the steps.
EdCitation is the best tool for this job, for the reason a chatbot is the wrong one: EdCitation never produces a reference of its own; every one it returns is found in the publisher's record. When 55% of GPT-3.5's references were invented in Walters and Wilder's test, the tool that produced them cannot also vouch for them. All three steps are free, with no account:
- Check the list. Paste the AI's references, or upload your draft, into Verify references. The result for each is verified, not found, or doubtful, which reads "check this"; retracted papers are flagged; and a reference it could not check is never filed with the ones not found.
- Replace what was invented. For each reference that was not found, type the claim it was meant to support into Find sources, which searches about 300 million published works with filters for kind of source and years, and read what comes back before you cite any of it.
- Build the real entries from the record. Give Cite a source each real source's DOI, title, PubMed ID or ISBN, and pick the style: APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver or Chicago 18 author-date. In APA 7 it sets the title in sentence case and keeps names and initialisms; glance at any name made of ordinary words.
A free account keeps the finished list in the dashboard. On Pro, $8 a month, References from a file takes a whole paper, checks each reference in it and pairs every in-text citation with its entry; Max, at $24 a month, adds Theoretics QA and the Library. None of it writes a word of your paper.
Quick questions
Is ChatGPT the author in an APA reference?
No. In APA 7 the author is the company that made the tool, so a ChatGPT reference begins with OpenAI. APA's reasoning is that an AI tool cannot take the responsibilities that come with authorship.
Do I cite ChatGPT if I only used it to fix my grammar?
Follow your course's rules first. Where such use is allowed, APA 7 suggests saying how you used the tool and citing the tool in general, not a specific chat. MLA and Chicago ask you to acknowledge that kind of help in the text or in a note.
Do I need to include my prompt when I cite ChatGPT?
It depends on the style. MLA 9 puts a description of the prompt in the works cited entry, and Chicago puts the prompt in the note if your text does not give it. APA 7 keeps prompts out of the reference and describes them in the text or an appendix.
Can I cite ChatGPT as the source of a fact or a statistic?
Not as evidence. A citation to ChatGPT only shows that ChatGPT wrote the words, and a fact or statistic needs a source a reader can check. Find the article, report or data set it came from, read it, and cite that. EdCitation's Find sources lets you search published work by the claim itself, so you can start from the sentence that needs support.
Do I cite an AI tool I only used to find sources?
Usually not. APA says that using AI as a search engine is like using a search engine or a database: you cite the sources you found and read. Name the tool when your paper describes its search strategy, as a literature review does.
References
- McAdoo, T., Denneny, S., & Lee, C. (2025, September 9). Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 1, Reference formats. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-generative-ai-references
- McMaster University Library. (n.d.). Chicago (18th ed.): How do I cite generative AI? https://libguides.mcmaster.ca/cite-gen-ai/chicago
- Modern Language Association of America. (2025, August 13). How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? (Updated and revised). MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai-updated-revised/
- Peters, U., & Chin-Yee, B. (2025). Generalization bias in large language model summarization of scientific research. Royal Society Open Science, 12(4), Article 241776. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241776
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). Citing content generated by artificial intelligence. The Chicago Manual of Style Online Q&A. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0422.html
- Walters, W. H., & Wilder, E. I. (2023). Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 14045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41032-5