Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

How do I cite generative AI in MLA style?

https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/

The MLA’s method for citing sources uses a template of core elements—standardized criteria that writers can use to evaluate sources and create works-cited-list entries based on that evaluation. MLA offers recommendations for citing generative AI, defined as a tool that “can analyze or summarize content from a huge set of information, including web pages, books and other writing available on the internet, and use that data to create original new content” (Weed). 

Researchers 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 (see example 5 for more details)
• keep in mind: the MLA template of core elements is meant to provide flexibility in creating citations. So if you find a rationale to modify these recommendations in your own citations, you are encouraged you to do so. 

Examples provided by the MLA are: 

• Paraphrasing Text
• Quoting Text
• Citing Creative Visual Works
• Quoting Creative Textual Works
• Citing Secondary Sources Used by an AI Tool

(Updated March 17, 2023)

Q. How do you recommend citing content developed or generated by artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT? 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.”?

A.https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0422.html 

Researchers do need to credit ChatGPT and similar tools whenever the text that they generate is used in a work. For a student paper or for a research article— a numbered footnote or endnote might look like this:

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

ChatGPT is the author of the content, and the date is the date the text was generated. OpenAI (the organization that developed ChatGPT) is then listed as the publisher or sponsor of the content. After that, the URL tells us where the ChatGPT tool may be found, but because readers can’t 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,” March 7, 2023, OpenAI.

If 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).”

Do not cite ChatGPT in a bibliography or reference list. Though OpenAI assigns unique URLs to conversations generated from your prompts, those can’t be used by others to access the same content, making a ChatGPT conversation like an email, phone, or text conversation—or any other type of personal communication (see CMOS 14.214 and 15.53).

You must credit ChatGPT when you reproduce its words within your own work, but that information should be put in the text or in a note—not in a bibliography or reference list. Other AI-generated text can be cited similarly.

Q. How do you cite images generated by DALL·E?

A. According to an article on the website of OpenAI, the organization responsible for DALL·E, “If you’d like to cite DALL·E, we’d recommend including wording such as ‘This image was created with the assistance of DALL·E 2’ or ‘This image was generated with the assistance of AI’ ” (see “How Should I Credit DALL·E in My Work?,” accessed March 22, 2023).  https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6640875-how-should-i-credit-dall-e-in-my-work

In other words, be sure to give credit to the source, as you would for any image (see CMOS 3.29–37). 

The credit for an image might read as follows (with the prompt used to generate the image in quotation marks):

“A modern office rendered as a cubist painting,” image generated by OpenAI’s DALL·E 2, March 5, 2023.

Source: CMOS Online March Q & A  (Accessed March 22, 2023)

This format has been applied to citations in Medline and Pubmed. 

Example: 

ChatGPT. OpenAI. 2022. Available at: https://beta.openai.com/docs/models/chatgpt. [Accessed 14 December 2022].