How to Cite an AI-Generated Image

APA does not currently publish a dedicated example for this exact source type. The format below applies APA's current AI citation principles to this source.

What APA does publish is two worked AI forms: an AI tool — Google. (2025). Gemini 3 Flash [Large language model]. https://gemini.google.com — and an AI chat, which adds the day and a title and moves the tool's name after the brackets. See APA's AI references examples page and its reference-formats post and judge for yourself. The entry below is APA's chat form element for element — company, full date, a description in the title slot, the version in parentheses, a bracketed label and the link. What is ours is the label itself: [AI-generated image] appears in no APA example. APA permits the swap in so many words — "other descriptions are possible; use the description that best fits the type of AI model or tool used", and, of the chat form, "Adapt the wording within square brackets as needed" — so treat [AI-generated image] as the wording Citation[Z] chose under that permission, and use your instructor's if they prefer another.

Company (as author) → date → a short description of the image → the model, or a real version number where your tool publishes one → [AI-generated image] → where it lives. The example below is the second case: Midjourney versions, no model name. The generator builds this from Manual Entry → AI-generated image.

An AI-generated image is a picture produced by a text-to-image model (Midjourney, DALL·E, Adobe Firefly, Stable Diffusion, Google Imagen) from a written prompt. By 2026 these are everywhere in coursework — slide decks, posters, mock-ups, illustrations — and that's exactly why citation matters now: more instructors require you to disclose AI use, and an AI image has no human creator to credit, so leaving it uncited reads as passing off generated work as your own.

Citing it does two things: it gives proper provenance (which tool, which model, when), and it protects you under your school's academic-integrity policy. When in doubt, cite and add a short note in your text describing how you generated it.

• Author — the company behind the tool (Midjourney, OpenAI, Adobe), never the model and never the image. APA's reasoning is worth knowing because it settles every argument about this: an AI "cannot be an author because it is not a living, conscious human who can give consent", while APA defines the author element as whoever is "responsible for a work" — which is the company that built the tool. You are the prompter, which is not the same thing either.
• Description / title — a short, plain description of the image, or the prompt you used. APA italicizes it; describe rather than invent a fancy title.
• Model — name the model, not a version number: APA withdrew version-by-default in September 2025 and asks for the model instead (DALL·E 3, Firefly Image 3), in the slot where the tool's name goes rather than in a parenthetical. Midjourney is the exception, and it's the one in the example above — it really does publish version numbers (v5, v6, v6.1, v7) and has no separate model name, and APA still allows a genuine version "in parentheses and unitalicized". So: the model where your tool names one, a version number only where your tool actually publishes one. MLA labels this element either way, and picks the label from which of the two you have: it prints ChatGPT, model GPT-4o for a model name and DALL-E, version 3 for a version number, so the Midjourney example above reads version v6.1.
• [AI-generated image] — the bracketed label that tells the reader this isn't a photograph or a human work.
• Source & link — where it lives (the tool, a share link, or your appendix) and the date you generated/accessed it.

This one is settled, and in the direction most guides get backwards: the company is the author, not the model. APA states both halves plainly — the author element is whoever is "responsible for a work", and an AI "cannot be an author because it is not a living, conscious human who can give consent". So Midjourney, OpenAI or Adobe goes in the author position, and the model name goes where the model goes. You are the prompter, which is a third thing again, so your prompt belongs in the description or a note.

What is genuinely unsettled is where the citation lives. Some instructors want the image as a figure with a caption and an in-text note rather than a reference-list entry, and MLA leans that way for AI images — it sends you to section 1.7 of its handbook for the caption and offers a works-cited-list entry as the alternative. Both are defensible — check your assignment, and whichever you use, keep the company, the model and the date. Current guidance: APA's AI references examples page and reference-formats post, and MLA's citing generative AI, updated and revised.

Each generator has its own quirks (model names, versions, attribution, share links). Use the tool-specific guides: Midjourney, DALL·E, and Adobe Firefly.