How to Cite an AI Conversation

Both lines are the style bodies' own published examples, copied as printed — and the APA one below is produced by the generator from the same share link, so you can see the engine land on it.

APA — company → the full date of the chat → the chat's own title in italic sentence case → [Generative AI chat] → the tool → the share link. There is no version parenthetical in the chat form: APA names the tool in the source element instead. Paste the share link into the generator and it resolves to this form, or build it under Manual Entry → AI conversation.

MLA — the description leads with "prompt" outside the closing quote, the tool is the italic container, and since August 2025 the model goes in the Version element (model GPT-4o) with a stable share URL in Location. MLA states plainly that it does not recommend treating the AI tool as an author, so nothing goes in the author position. In-text, MLA uses the shortened description — ("Describe the theme").

Chicago is deliberately not shown above, because Chicago does not want a reference-list entry here. For most uses it asks you to identify the tool in your prose — "the following summary was generated by ChatGPT". When a formal citation is needed, use a numbered note:

> 1. Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, June 12, 2026, https://chatgpt.com/share/…

Or, when the prompt is not already in your sentence:

> 1. ChatGPT, response to "what caused inflation in 2021," OpenAI, June 12, 2026, https://chatgpt.com/share/…

A generic "I used ChatGPT" citation isn't reproducible — your reader can't see what it actually said. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini now let you share a conversation as a public link, which pins the exact exchange. This is APA's own stated reason for having a chat reference at all: its 2023 advice was to cite only the tool because a specific chat could not then be retrieved and shared, and retrievability is a core requirement for most APA references. Using the link turns a vague gesture into a verifiable citation, and that's increasingly what instructors expect.

This is the precise version of citing AI: not the tool in the abstract, but this response, on this date.

• Author = the company (OpenAI for ChatGPT, Anthropic for Claude, Google for Gemini), not the chatbot's name.
• No version parenthetical — APA retired version numbers as a default in September 2025, and its chat form never had one: name the model in the source element (ChatGPT, Claude Sonnet 4) instead.
• Generate a share link in the tool and use it as the URL so the conversation is retrievable.
• Use the chat's own title in APA — and rename the chat in the tool first, which is APA's advice, so the title is descriptive. MLA wants a description of the prompt in that slot instead.
• Long or unstable output? If you can't share it, quote the relevant part in an appendix.