Q. How do you recommend citing content developed or generated by artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT? Many scholarly publishers are requiring its identification though also requiring human authors to take responsibility for it and will not permit the AI to have “authorship.”
A. You do need to credit ChatGPT and similar tools whenever you use the text that they generate in your own work (in addition to acknowledging other uses of such tools). But for most types of writing, you can simply name the AI tool in your text (e.g., “The following recipe for pizza dough was generated by ChatGPT”).
If 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 (where “URL” would be replaced by the URL copied from the Share button provided by OpenAI):
1. Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, January 10, 2026, URL.
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, January 10, 2026, URL.
If you’ve edited the AI-generated text, you should say so in the text or at the end of the note (e.g., “edited for style and content”). But you don’t need to say, for example, that you’ve applied smart quotes or adjusted the font; changes like those can be imposed silently (see CMOS 12.7 and 12.8).
For some considerations on the use of AI in scholarly publishing and the responsibilities of authors, start with this position statement on authorship and AI tools from COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).