Skip to Main Content

APA Style Guide: Generative AI

This guide explains how to use the APA Style. It includes a short tutorial.

Introduction to Citing Generative AI

This citation and referencing advice should be used only when your module coordinator or School allows the use of AI tools in the creation of academic assignments. If you have used an AI tool in the creation of an assignment, you must acknowledge this use and cite and reference the tool appropriately to ensure you are adhering to UCD's Academic Integrity Policy (see the Student Conduct website for this policy). 

Advice about citing and referencing AI tools is constantly evolving, and this guide updated on 24 March 2025, will continue to be updated as further information becomes available.

For the purposes of this guidance, generative AI is defined as per Article 3(1) of the EU AI Act:

“‘AI system’ means a machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments" (2024).

Generative AI often provides citations and sources that do not exist, or are inaccurate. Citations may also be inaccurate or missing appropriate notation within the text. All such references must be checked by the user to ensure the legitimacy of the references/citations provided by AI tools.

 

For general advice on citation and referencing please refer to our Academic Integrity guide.

References:
European Union, European Commission (2024),  Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Chapter1, Article 3. https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/3/
Guidance:


According to the APA Style Blog, quoting text from a chat session with a generative AI tool is “like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation (...).You may also put the full text of long responses from [the relevant generative AI tool] in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated.” (McAdoo, 2023)

Since the output of a  chat session with a generative AI tool is not retrievable by other readers, you should include it in an appendix, and refer readers to this appendix when you cite the AI-generated text (Southern Cross University Library, 2023)

 

Figure 1. A knitted floral scene.
Stable Diffusion image of a knitted floral garden, with butterflies, ladybirds and sunny ambience
Note. Image generated using Stable Diffusion. The image was generated in response to the prompt: "image of a knitted  floral garden, with butterflies, ladybirds and sunny ambience."
 
In-Text Citation:

Narrative citation: Company (Year) or Company (Year; see Appendix A for the full transcript)

Parenthetical citation: (Company, Year) or (Company, Year; see Appendix A for the full transcript)

Examples: 

When using OpenAI (2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript) to complete the prompt “Summarise 3 main points from the article “The Role of Librarians in Academic Success” by Claudia J. Dold”, the most recurring ideas were the following: librarians are teachers of information and literacy skills, internal and external collaborators, and scholars within their field.

Archery has been used since the Paelolithic Era to aid in hunting and protection. Since this sport was important to many regions around the world, it became a sport recognized by the Olympics and debuted in the 1900s games, and later became a permanent sport in 1972 (OpenAI, 2023).

 

When including the full text of the Chat interaction in an appendix to record the details of the prompt response (particularly important as each interaction with the same prompt is likely to generate a new and unique response), make a notation as below.

One relevant perspective is the concept of "ideology" or "rhetoric" in relation to dictators and authoritarian leaders. According to this view, leaders use propaganda, manipulation, and control over discourse to justify their actions, maintain their power, and suppress dissent (OpenAI, 2025; See Appendix C for the full transcript).

While you are required to acknowledge AI generated images in your work, there is currently (March 2025) no definitive guidance for citing them. The general consensus recommends the use of a figure number and title above the image, with a note of the image details below. It is also recommended that the word 'Note' appear in italics (see Figure 1).

Reference:

Company. (Year accessed). Program (Month Day version) [Large language model]. URL

The month and day used in this citation style will be the date you accessed/used the resource.

Example:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (May 18 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat.

Stability.ai (2025) Stable Diffusion (3.5) [AI image generator]. https://stablediffusionweb.com/

 

References:

McAdoo, T. (2023, April 7). How to cite ChatGPT. APA Style, https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Creative Commons license