Citation Guides: Citing ChatGPT and Generative AI Machines

While ACS has not yet specified citation guidelines for the use of generative AI (such as ChatGPT), their guidelines for Deriving a Citation for a New Content Type suggest adapting an already established format, in cases where it makes sense to do so.

Software is one already established ACS format that may make sense for an AI tool citation:

ChatGPT, ver. 3.5; OpenAI: San Francisco, 2023. https://openai.com/chatgpt (accessed 2023-06-22).

"The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software."

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.

"You should cite a generative AI tool whenever you

- paraphrase, quote, or incorporate into your own work any content (whether text, image, data, or other) that was created by it
- acknowledge all functional uses of the tool (like editing your prose or translating words) in a note, your text, or another suitable location
- take care to vet the secondary sources it cites"