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AI in Academic Research and Writing: APA 7 & AI

APA Guidelines

The current guidance for citing AI using APA 7 is summarized here through paraphrasing and direct quotations of the original source on the APA Style Blog, How to Cite ChatGPT.

Acknowledging Use of AI

You must describe your AI use in the body of your paper.

Info to include in the description:

  • Which tool(s) you used
  • How you used the tool(s)
  • Your prompt
  • Any relevant generated responses
  • In-text citation and corresponding Reference list entry (see page section Citation Formatting for more info)

Suggested locations for this info:

  • For research papers, consider the Method section (or comparable)
  • For lit reviews, essays, response/reaction papers, consider the Introduction

Since the response you receive from an AI tool is unique to that chat session, consider providing the full response in an appendix or supplemental materials. If you do so, be sure to also call out this material at least once in the body of your paper.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

Reference

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Reference

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

Citation Formatting

APA 7 uses an adapted version of their reference template for software (APA, 2020, section 10.10) to cite AI generated content.

Parenthetical In-Text Citation

(Author of the model, Year)

Reference List Entry

Author of the model. (Version year of the tool). Title of the model (Model version) [Description of type of model]. Publisher. URL

Note: If the author and publisher are the same, omit the publisher name. This is the case for ChatGPT.

In-Text Citation

(OpenAI, 2023)

Reference List Entry

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Sept 25 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/

In-Text Citation

(Google DeepMind, 2024)

Reference List Entry

Google DeepMind. (2024). Gemini (1.0 Pro version) [Large language model]. https://gemini.google.com/app/