APA revised its generative AI guidance in September 2025. MLA revised its own in August 2025. University library guides still display the older 2023 templates, and a student following one of those pages will produce a reference that no longer matches the style manual.
This guide gives the current format for all three styles, plus the two questions that cause the most confusion: what to do when there is no shareable link and why Chicago keeps ChatGPT out of the bibliography.
The Short Answer
The same conversation produces three different entries, because the three styles disagree about what a chatbot exchange fundamentally is. Here is one exchange, cited three ways.
APA treats the output as an algorithm’s product, so the company is the author:
OpenAI. (2025, August 21). Photosynthesis and energy conversion [Generative AI chat]. ChatGPT. https://chatgpt.com/share/…
MLA treats the prompt as the title and never names an author:
“Explain how photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy” prompt. ChatGPT, GPT-5, OpenAI, 21 Aug. 2025, https://chatgpt.com/share/…
Chicago treats ChatGPT as the author and OpenAI as the publisher and puts the citation in a note rather than the bibliography:
- Text generated by ChatGPT-5, OpenAI, August 21, 2025, https://chatgpt.com/share/…
Three elements move: who counts as the author, where the prompt goes, and whether the entry appears in the end matter at all.
Why ChatGPT Breaks a Standard Citation
Citation systems were built around three assumptions, and a chatbot conversation violates all of them.
There is no human author. MLA states directly that the AI tool should not be treated as an author, following policies set by academic publishers, including Cambridge University Press. APA reaches the same conclusion differently, crediting the company that built the model rather than the model itself.
The output is not reproducible. The same prompt produces different text in different sessions. A reader who runs it again will not see what the writer saw, which is the opposite of what a citation guarantees.
The conversation may not be retrievable. A private chat cannot be opened by anyone else. This property explains most of the divergence between the styles, since each solves retrievability differently and the share link is what changes the answer.
Check Permission Before Citation
A correct citation does not make the underlying use acceptable. Policies vary by institution, by department, and often by assignment, and a citation formatted perfectly under a policy that prohibited the tool documents the breach rather than resolving it.
Most policies take one of three positions:
- Prohibited
No AI assistance on assessed work. A citation creates no exemption.
- Permitted with disclosure
Use is allowed if declared. This is where correct citation matters most, and it is the most common position at present.
- Permitted for specific tasks
Brainstorming or grammar are allowed while generated prose is not. The citation format then depends on which task the tool performed, a distinction APA builds into its two reference templates.
Where a syllabus is silent, silence is not permission.
How to Cite ChatGPT in APA Style
APA published revised guidance on 9 September 2025, and it introduced a distinction the older format did not have: whether to cite a specific chat or the tool in general.
Citing a Specific Chat
Use this when ChatGPT generated ideas, content, or information that appears in the work.
Template
AI Company. (Year, Month Day). Title of the chat [Generative AI chat].
Tool Name/Model. URL of the chat
Example
OpenAI. (2025, August 21). Photosynthesis and energy conversion [Generative AI chat]. ChatGPT. https://chatgpt.com/share/…
The title is descriptive rather than official, since chats have no formal titles. Write one that identifies the exchange, in sentence case and italics. The URL must be a shareable link generated through ChatGPT’s share function, not the address bar URL from a private session.
Citing the Tool in General
Use this when ChatGPT is assisted with editing, organizing existing writing, or translation rather than generating content.
Template
AI Company. (Year). Tool Name/Model [Large language model]. URL of the tool
Example
OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (GPT-5) [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com/
In-Text Citations
Both formats name the company and the year, since the company is the author:
When prompted for a summary of light-dependent reactions, the model described the process in three stages (OpenAI, 2025).
APA also recommends disclosing AI use in the Method section or author note, describing what the tool did rather than only that it was used. The reference identifies the source; the disclosure explains its role.
What Changed, and Why It Matters
The widely copied 2023 format looked like this:
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
Three elements are now out of date: the version-by-date convention, the old domain, and the absence of any chat-specific option. APA’s current guidance supersedes it.
Two further points are easy to miss. AI output is not personal communication, because personal communication requires a person, so it belongs in the reference list. And AI built into ordinary software, such as a writing assistant inside a word processor, needs no citation at all, on the same reasoning that applies to a spell checker.
How to Cite ChatGPT in MLA Style
MLA revised its generative AI guidance in August 2025. The structure follows MLA’s standard template of core elements, with the prompt occupying the title position.
The Works-Cited Entry
Template
“Prompt text” prompt. Tool Name, Model, Company, Day Month Year, URL.
Example
“Explain how photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy” prompt. ChatGPT, GPT-5, OpenAI, 21 Aug. 2025, https://chatgpt.com/share/…
The prompt goes in quotation marks, followed by the lowercase word prompt. Where a prompt runs long, MLA allows a short description of what was generated to stand in its place.
In-Text Citation
MLA in-text citations point to whatever begins the works-cited entry, which here is the prompt rather than a name. A shortened form in quotation marks does the job:
(“Explain how photosynthesis”)
Because the prompt is the identifying element, two conversations with the same tool need distinguishable prompts in the works-cited list.
What Changed in 2025
Two revisions matter. MLA now prefers a stable, shareable URL to the conversation, falling back to a general link to the tool only when no share feature exists. And the model name or number now belongs in the version element, so GPT-4o or GPT-5 appears rather than a dated version label.
MLA also asks for acknowledgement of functional uses that fall short of quotation. Using ChatGPT to edit prose or translate a passage should be noted somewhere in the work, even when nothing it produced is quoted.
How to Cite ChatGPT in Chicago Style
Chicago’s guidance sits in section 14.112 of the 18th edition. Chicago runs two documentation systems, and ChatGPT is handled in both, so the first step is knowing which one the assignment uses. Turabian, the student adaptation, has not yet been updated for the 18th edition and carries no dedicated AI format of its own.
Notes and Bibliography
ChatGPT is treated as the author of the content and OpenAI as the publisher or sponsor. The citation belongs in a numbered footnote or endnote.
With the prompt given in the text
- Text generated by ChatGPT-5, OpenAI, August 21, 2025, https://chatgpt.com/share/…
With the prompt in the note
- ChatGPT, response to “Explain how photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy,” OpenAI, August 21, 2025.
If the output was edited before use, Chicago asks for that to be stated, either in the text or at the end of the note, with a phrase such as edited for style and content. Routine formatting changes need no mention.
Author-Date
Under the author-date system, anything not already given in the text goes in a parenthetical reference:
(ChatGPT, August 21, 2025)
Why It Usually Stays Out of the Bibliography
Chicago generally excludes AI conversations from the bibliography, reasoning that a reader cannot independently locate them. The exception is a publicly available URL. Where one exists and a bibliography entry is required, the entry is filed under the developer’s name rather than the tool’s:
OpenAI. Response to “Explain how photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy.” ChatGPT-5, August 21, 2025. https://chatgpt.com/share/…
Chicago is also the most permissive about informal work. For many kinds of writing, acknowledging the tool in a sentence of running text is enough.
The Three Styles Side by Side
Six decisions separate the three styles. Reading down a column gives one style’s approach; reading across a row shows where they disagree.
| APA | MLA | Chicago | |
| Who is the author? | The company (OpenAI) | No author | ChatGPT, with OpenAI as publisher |
| Where the prompt goes | Described in the text | The title of the entry | The text or the note |
| Where the citation lives | Reference list | Works-cited list | Footnote or endnote |
| In the end matter | Yes | Yes | Usually not |
| Model or version | In the entry | In the version element | With the tool name |
| Latest revision | September 2025 | August 2025 | 18th edition (2024) |
A reference correctly formatted for one style cannot be adapted to another by rearranging elements, because the styles disagree about what the elements are. That is why switching styles mid-degree, or writing for two departments in one term, means rebuilding a bibliography rather than editing it. The CudekAI Citation Generator converts a finished list between APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard without re-entering any of the source details.
Harvard deserves a note here. It is standard across many UK, Australian, and business programmes, but unlike the three styles above, it has no single governing manual, so the exact format varies by institution. Check the university’s own Harvard guide before formatting an AI citation in it.
What to Record Before Closing the Chat
Citation tools work by retrieval. Paste a DOI, an ISBN, or a published URL, and the tool fetches the author, title, and date from a database or a web page. Nothing needs typing because the details already exist somewhere public.
A ChatGPT conversation has none of those identifiers. It has no DOI, no ISBN, and, unless a share link was created, no address any tool can reach. The details a citation needs live inside one person’s session, which means they cannot be recovered later by any tool, including this one.
Three of the four become unrecoverable quickly.
The share link has to be generated during or after the conversation through ChatGPT’s share function. A closed chat that was never shared cannot be linked retroactively.
The model version is visible at the time of use. Models are updated and retired, so a conversation from several months ago may not be traceable to the model that produced it.
The date generated is the date of the exchange, not the date the citation is written. It is the element writers most often approximate, and approximating it makes the citation wrong.
A short descriptive title is needed for APA, which expects one even though chats have no formal titles. Writing it while the exchange is fresh takes seconds; reconstructing it later produces something vague.
Capture those four at the moment of use. That habit removes most of the difficulty from AI citation, because the hard part was never the formatting.
Verifying the Sources ChatGPT Provides
Citing the conversation correctly solves one problem. It does not touch a larger one.
Language models produce references that look structurally correct and do not exist. Author names, journal titles, volume numbers, and DOIs can all be plausible and still fabricated. MLA addresses this directly, instructing writers to vet any secondary sources an AI tool cites.
The rule is simple to state and frequently ignored: every source a model provides gets located and read before it is cited. A reference the writer has not opened is not a citation but a guess with formatting.
There is a related textual risk. Generated passages sometimes reproduce phrasing close to existing published material, an attribution problem the AI citation does not resolve. For practical ways to handle source attribution correctly, see how to avoid plagiarism in an essay. CudekAI’s Plagiarism Checker surfaces those overlaps with the source behind each match.
Common Mistakes When Citing ChatGPT
Copying a template from an outdated guide. Any APA example showing (Mar 14 version) or a chat.openai.com address predates the September 2025 revision.
Using the address bar URL instead of a share link. A private conversation URL requires the original account’s login, so it looks functional and works for nobody else.
Treating AI output as personal communication in APA. APA rules this out explicitly, on the grounds that personal communication requires a person.
Citing the conversation but not disclosing the use. Both APA and MLA expect a separate account of how the tool was used.
Putting a Chicago AI citation in the bibliography by default. It belongs in a note unless a publicly available URL exists.
The Practical Takeaway
The three styles diverge because they disagree about what a chatbot conversation is: an algorithm’s output, an untitled source identified by its prompt, or something closer to a personal exchange. Each format follows from that framing, and the logic is easier to remember than three templates.
Two habits cover most of the risk. Generate a share link at the time of use, since reconstructing one later is impossible, and check the style’s current guidance rather than a secondary summary, since two of the three changed in 2025.
It is also worth keeping the ChatGPT citation in proportion. A paper that cites one conversation cites many other sources, and those journal articles, books, and web pages carry the same formatting burden in whichever style the department requires. The CudekAI Citation Generator builds entries from a URL, DOI, or ISBN where one exists and from manual fields where none does, which is what an AI conversation needs. Finished bibliographies switch between APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard in one step and export to Word, PDF, or BibTeX.
FAQs
Do ChatGPT conversations go in the reference list?
In APA and MLA, yes. In Chicago, generally no: the citation belongs in a footnote or endnote, and a bibliography entry is added only when a publicly available URL exists, filed under the developer’s name.
What if there is no shareable link to the conversation?
MLA accepts a general link to the tool when no stable URL is available, and APA’s tool-level format serves the same purpose. Because no generator can fetch metadata from a private chat, the entry has to be built by entering the fields directly, which the CudekAI Citation Generator supports alongside URL and DOI lookup.
How do I cite Gemini, Claude, or Copilot?
The same structures apply, with the company and tool name substituted. APA and MLA templates are written generically for any AI tool, so Google becomes the author for Gemini and Anthropic for Claude, with the model name recorded exactly as the other two styles require.
Should the prompt appear in the citation?
MLA requires it, as the title of the entry. Chicago allows it in either the text or the note. APA describes the prompt in the text rather than placing it in the reference.
Does using ChatGPT for grammar and editing need a citation?
APA covers this with its tool-level format plus disclosure, rather than a chat-specific reference. MLA asks for functional uses to be acknowledged somewhere in the work. Neither treats light editing the same as generated content.
Which model version should be recorded?
Whichever produced the text. MLA places the model name in the version element, APA includes it with the tool, and Chicago attaches it to the tool name. Recording it at the time of use is easier than reconstructing it later.