Subject Guides: Generative AI at UM-Dearborn: Citing

Is it plagiarism?

Citations help your audience know and understand your information is coming from; it helps them follow your information trail. Citing also helps to lend you some credibility. For example, when you are searching for reliable information, you probably want to know where the author got their information from as a way to verify its reliability, Your audience wants to do the same. Additionally, there is an ethical component to citations. In an academic setting, as well as in others, you should credit where you are getting your ideas from. Citations are the way that we give credit in an academic environment. The standardization of citations makes sure you're providing all the information necessary to your audience on where they can find (and maybe review for themselves!) your sources.

Major citation styles have begun to address generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. If you are using Generative AI tools like ChatGPT or UM-GPT, you need to cite them in your work. When you use generative AI tools to generate material, you should not pass it off as your own original work, just like you should not copy and paste someone else's written work without citing it and pass it off as your own. There is some disagreement about what citing these tools looks like especially as they become more common and we as a society evolve in our use of them. The following are the current recommendations, and they may be likely to change. Also check with your professors to see how they expect you to cite and aknowledge the use of Generative AI tools.

Examples of when to cite Generative Ai tools in your work include:

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

Citing Generative AI

APA: How to Cite ChatGPT

APA citations for ChatGPT and other AI models are adapted from the reference template for software, found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Author: Author of the model (OpenAI, etc)
Date: The date is the year of the version you used. You need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need. For ChatGPT, the version date can be found at the bottom of the page when you have the chat page open.
Title: The name of the model (Chat-GPT, LLama, etc)
Bracketed text: Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets
Source: use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

EXAMPLE:

When prompted with the question, "why is citing important," ChatGPT noted that one of the reasons is that it "aids further research; references can be used by other researchers who want to explore the subject further" (OpenAI, 2023).

Reference

OpenAI. (2023) ChatGPT (August 2023 version) [large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

APA also notes,

"You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper."

MLA: How do I cite generative AI in MLA style?

Use the Elements normally included in a MLA citation. MLA's recommendations on how to address each of these for ChatGPT and other GenerativeAI tools:

Author: MLA does not recommend treating the AI toool as an author. This recommendation follows policies developed by various publishers .
Title of source: describe what was generated by the AI tool. This should include information about the prompt you used if not included elsewhere
Title of container: name the AI tool (e.g. ChatGPT, UM-GPT, Bard, etc)
Version: name the version of the Ai tool as specifically as possible. For ChatGPT, the date version is found at the bottom of the page when you have the chat box open.
Publisher: name the company that made the tool
Date: give the date the content was generated
location: give the general URL for the tool

EXAMPLE

The green light in the Great Gatsby symbolizes, "Gatsby's dreams, hopes, and his longing for the past ("Describe the symbolism").

Works Cited

"Describe the symbolism of the green light in the Great Gatsby" prompt. ChatGPT, 3 Feb. version, OpenAI, 3 August 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.

There is no formal guidance regarding how to reference AI-generated content in IEEE referencing style. However, For papers submitted to IEEE journals or conferences, IEEE requires full disclosure of AI content and the AI system used to generate it in an Acknowledgments section.

A citation for ChatGPT or other generative AI tool could look like this:

[Citation number] Author (Program Name), response to author query. Publisher [Online]. URL, (Accessed date).

EXAMPLE:
[1] ChatGPT, response to author query. OpenAI [Online]. https://chatgpt.pro/ (accessed February 15, 2023).

[2] ChatGPT, response to author query. UM-GPT [Online]. https://umgpt.umich.edu/ (accessed August 30, 2023).

Best Practice Advice for IEEE is to:

Include an in-text citation
Include a description in your reference section or footnotes
Include transcript of your “conversation” in an appendix

Notes and Bibliography Style:

For Chicago style, you may cite that you used AI in the your text i 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.

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

Author-Date Style:

If you’re 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).”

But don’t cite ChatGPT in a bibliography or reference list unless you provide a publicly available link (e.g., via a browser extension like ShareGPT or A.I. Archives). Though OpenAI assigns unique URLs to conversations generated from your prompts, those can’t be used by others to access the same content (they require your login credentials), 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).

Source: Chicago Manual of Style. "Citation, Documentation of Source."

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