How to cite ChatGPT in APA 7th edition

TL;DR. In APA 7th edition, you cite ChatGPT as an AI tool with OpenAI as the author, the year, ChatGPT (with the version date in parentheses) as the title in italics, a description in brackets, and the URL. The in-text citation is (OpenAI, 2025). You do not treat ChatGPT as a personal communication, and you should describe how you used it in your Methods or a note. This guide gives you the exact format, in-text rules, and the small details (italics, capitalization, hanging indent) that graders check. When your draft is done, you can check your paper's APA formatting to confirm the reference list and spacing are correct.

The official APA guidance

The APA Style team published direct guidance on citing generative AI in 2023, and it treats a tool like ChatGPT as software, not as a person you interviewed. This matters because an earlier instinct many students have is to cite it as a "personal communication" (the format used for emails or private interviews). APA explicitly recommends against that, because a personal communication is not recoverable by your reader, and a reference-list entry gives your instructor more information about the tool and version you used.

So ChatGPT gets a full, recoverable reference-list entry, formatted like other software.

The reference-list entry

Here is the template APA recommends:

Author. (Year). Title of software (Version) [Descriptor]. Source URL

Applied to ChatGPT, a correct entry looks like this:

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (June 30 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

Break it down piece by piece, because each element has a rule:

• Author: OpenAI. The company that makes the model is the author. Not "ChatGPT," not "AI," not you.
• Year: (2025). Use the year of the version you used.
• Title: ChatGPT. The name of the model is the title, and it is set in italics. Follow it immediately with the version in parentheses, which is not italicized.
• Version: (June 30 version) or (GPT-4o version). Use whatever version label the interface shows you. OpenAI labels versions by date at the bottom of the page, so a date like "June 30 version" is acceptable. If you know the specific model (for example, GPT-4o), you can use that.
• Descriptor: [Large language model]. In square brackets, describe what the tool is. "Large language model" is APA's own example.
• URL. Link to the general tool. At the time APA wrote its guidance, ChatGPT conversations were not shareable, so the URL points to the chat tool itself, not to your specific conversation. If you use a service that gives a stable shareable link to the exact conversation, you may use that instead.

Note there is no period after the URL — that is a general APA rule for all references ending in a link.

The in-text citation

In-text, you cite the author and year like any other source:

• Parenthetical: (OpenAI, 2025)
• Narrative: OpenAI (2025)

If you are quoting or reproducing a specific response, introduce it clearly. For example:

When prompted to summarize the causes of the French Revolution, ChatGPT identified fiscal crisis, social inequality, and Enlightenment ideas (OpenAI, 2025).

Because ChatGPT does not produce page numbers, you cannot add a page locator. Instead, if you want your reader to see the exact exchange, APA suggests including the full prompt and the response either in the body of your text or in an appendix. Quoting the prompt is what makes the "citation" actually useful, since the same prompt can produce different outputs.

Describe how you used it

A reference entry alone does not explain what role the AI played in your work — and that is usually what an instructor most wants to know. APA recommends describing your use of the tool in your paper, typically in the Method section for an empirical paper, or in the introduction or a note for other kinds of writing.

Be specific and honest. Good disclosures read like:

I used ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2025) to generate an initial list of search terms, which I then refined manually before running my literature search.

The prompts I entered and the responses I received are provided in Appendix A.

This is not just etiquette. Many instructors and institutions now require an AI-use statement, and a vague or missing one is a common way students get flagged. Say what you asked, what you did with the answer, and where the full exchange lives.

A quick worked example

Say you asked ChatGPT to explain a statistics concept while studying, and you want to reference that in a paper. Your pieces are:

• In the text: "To check my understanding, I asked for a plain-language explanation of standard deviation (OpenAI, 2025)."
• In the reference list:

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (June 30 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

• In an appendix: the exact prompt you typed and the full response you received.

That is a complete, defensible citation.

Citing other AI tools

The same pattern extends to other generative tools. Swap in the correct company (author) and product name (title):

• Gemini: Google. (2025). Gemini (version) [Large language model]. https://gemini.google.com
• Copilot: Microsoft. (2025). Copilot (version) [Large language model]. URL
• Claude: Anthropic. (2025). Claude (version) [Large language model]. https://claude.ai

If the tool generates images rather than text, change the descriptor accordingly, for example [Text-to-image model]. The structure — author, year, italicized title, version, bracketed descriptor, URL — stays the same.

Formatting details graders actually check

Getting the wording right is only half the job. On the page, an APA reference entry for ChatGPT must also follow the mechanical rules that apply to your whole reference list:

• Hanging indent. The first line of the entry sits at the left margin; every line after it is indented half an inch. This applies to every reference, including the ChatGPT one.
• Double spacing. The entire reference list is double-spaced, with no extra blank lines between entries.
• Alphabetical order. "OpenAI" is alphabetized by O among your other sources — it does not go in a separate section.
• Italics in the right place. Only the model name (ChatGPT) is italicized. The version, the bracketed descriptor, and the URL are all in regular type.
• "References" heading. Centered, bold, on its own line at the top of the page.

These are exactly the kinds of things that are easy to miss when you are formatting by hand at 2 a.m. — a reference that loses its hanging indent, single spacing that sneaks into one entry, or an italicized URL.

Confirm your formatting before you submit

Once your citation reads correctly, the last step is making sure your document looks right: 1-inch margins, an APA-approved font, double spacing throughout, correct heading levels, a proper title page, page numbers in the header, and a reference list with hanging indents. You can run your finished Word file through the APA format checker to get an itemized report of what already matches APA 7 and what still needs fixing — including whether your reference list spacing and indents are set up correctly. It checks and cleans the formatting of the paper you wrote; it does not write content or invent sources, so your ChatGPT citation stays exactly as you entered it.

Cite the tool honestly, disclose how you used it, and format the entry like software — and your ChatGPT citation will hold up.