The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) is commonly used to format academic/scholarly writing in social sciences fields, such as education, sociology, nursing, political science, criminal justice, and psychology. If unclear, ask your instructor which style is preferred for your assignment.
APA 7th Edition Guidelines and Examples:
Tool developer. (Year). Model (Month Day version or version number) [Type of AI model if known] URL
(company, year)
APA reference entry: OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Feb 13 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com
APA in-text citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
Whenever possible, directly link to the generative AI interaction. To do this, allow sharing during the interaction with the GenAI tool so anyone using a link can view the interaction.
The official APA blog: How to cite ChatGPT has more information for citing Generative AI.
The name of the model serves as the title and should be italicized in the reference. APA guidance says ou should use the general name, such as ChatGPT, not the iterations, such as ChatGPT-3 or ChatGPT-4, because the updates are identified in the version section.
Version identification is provided in parentheses after the title. For some models, the version identification will be the month and day (the year having been provided before the date). This is the case, for example, for OpenAI’s ChatGPT. For other models, the version identification might be a number, such as Google’s Gemini.
In APA style, bracketed text provides additional information, typically for references identifying things that are not traditional peer-reviewed articles. For GenAI tools, often this would be “large language model” or “large multimedia model.” Use the information that the company provides.
At the end of the citation, you should provide the URL. Provide the most specific URL available rather than simply a home page. For example, for ChatGPT, provide https://chatgpt.com or https://chat.openai.com/chat, not https://openai.com.