Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Author: The MLA style guide does not recommend treating the AI tool as an author. (Note that the author element is not present in the recommended citation examples for generative AI.)

Title of Source: Describe what was generated by the AI tool. This may involve including information about the prompt in the Title of Source element if you have not done so in the text.

Title of Container: Name of the AI tool (e.g. ChatGPT, DALL-E).

Version: Name the version of the AI tool as specifically as possible. Different companies describe and/or name subsequent versions of their tools differently (e.g. GPT-4o, Llama 3.3).

Publisher: Name the company that made the tool (e.g. OpenAI, Meta).

Date: The date the content was generated.

Location: The general URL for the tool.

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations.

("Shortened description of prompt")

Example: ("Identify the themes in Dracula")

Works Cited List entries generally follow the same format, whether you are quoting or paraphrasing the prose or creative text of AI output or citing an image or other creative work generated by an AI tool:

AI-Generated Text (prose):

"Text of your prompt" prompt. Title of Container, Version number, Publisher, dd Mmm. yyyy, URL.

Example: “Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, GPT-4, OpenAI, 08 Aug. 2024, chat.openai.com/chat.

AI-Generated Text (creative work with title):

"Title" brief synopsis of instructions to AI. Title of Container, Version number, Publisher, dd Mmm. yyyy, URL.

Example: "The Sunflower" sonnet about a sunflower. ChatGPT, GPT-4o, OpenAI, 12 Jan. 2025, chatgpt.com/chat.

AI-Generated Text (creative work with no title):

"Complete or partial first line of creative work" brief synopsis of instructions to AI. Title of Container, Version number, Publisher, dd Mmm. yyyy, URL.

Example: "The road, man, it's a wild ride, a never-ending journey through the heart of America..." short essay on Trump's inauguration in the style of Jack Kerouac. Copilot, GPT-4, Microsoft, 20 Jan. 2025. copilot.cloud.microsoft.

AI-Generated Visual Work:

Fig no. "Description of prompt" prompt. Title of Container, Version number, Publisher, dd Mmm. yyyy, URL.

Example: "Yggdrasil tree of life made out of bits and bytes" prompt. Gemini, 1.5 Flash, Google, 19 Jan. 2025. gemini.google.com.