Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The following recommendations are based on the guidelines set out in the ninth edition of the MLA style manual.
Some clarifications regarding the core elements of the MLA template are provided below:
Author: the AI tool is not treated as an author.
Title of source: this is a description of the document generated by the AI tool.
Title of container: provide the name of the AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT).
Version: name the version of the AI tool as specifically as possible. For instance, if ChatGPT 3.5, which assigns a specific date to the version, is used, you must indicate the date of this version.
Publisher: name the company that made the tool (e.g., Open AI).
Date: give the date the content was generated.
The citation consists of a short version of the title, maximum three words:
While the green light in The Great Gatsby might be said to chiefly symbolize four main things: optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed, and covetousness (“Describe the symbolism”), arguably the most important—the one that ties all four themes together—is greed.
The reference entry would be:
REFERENCE FORMAT
| “Title of source.” Title of container, Version, Publisher, Publication date, Location. |
EXAMPLE
| “Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat. |
For quoting text, an example is as follows:
When asked to describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby, ChatGPT provided a summary about optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed, and covetousness. However, when further prompted to cite the source on which that summary was based, it noted that it lacked “the ability to conduct research or cite sources independently” but that it could “provide a list of scholarly sources related to the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” (“In 200 words”).
The reference entry would be:
REFERENCE FORMAT
| “Title of source.” Title of container, Version, Publisher, Publication date, Location. |
EXAMPLE
| “In 200 words, describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” follow-up prompt to list sources. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 9 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat. |
Finally, you should check the secondary sources used by the AI tool, as sometimes they are not real sources or the tool does not indicate precisely what a given source has contributed.
For example, if you ask Bing AI to explain the concept of the political unconscious, citing sources, and it provides the following answer:
If you decide to quote the last sentence, you have to check the source provided in the note.
Once you have checked the veracity of the source, you can incorporate the quotation into your work.
