Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education at ENMU

Before you start

Students, please first confirm with your professor that using ChatGPT or other content produced by generative artificial intelligence (AI) is acceptable before citing it. Your professor may also have a specific way they would like you to reference ChatGPT.

Why should I reference ChatGPT content?

References tell your reader where your information came from and how you used it in your work. If you use content created by a tool like ChatGPT, including it in your works cited - as you would with any other source - is the responsible thing to do. If you use ChatGPT to help write or structure your paper, even if you do not otherwise quote or paraphrase its content, you will likely wish to acknowledge your use of it in some manner. This provides transparency to your reader.

Are there official guidelines for citing ChatGPT?

Generative AI is a relatively new phenomenon. As such, citation styles may lack specific guidelines for referencing AI-generated content. It is likely that guidelines will be updated, so checking for the most recent recommendations is advisable.

Here are some fundamental ideas that hold true for citing AI generated content, no matter which citation style you're using:

• Do cite or acknowledge the outputs of generative AI tools when you use them in your work. This includes direct quotations and paraphrasing, as well as using the tool for tasks like editing, translating, idea generation, and data processing. 
• Do not use sources that are cited by AI tools without reading those sources yourself. There are two different reasons for this:
  • Generative AI tools can create fake citations.
  • These tools may cite a real piece of writing, but the cited content may be inaccurate. 

• Be flexible in your approach to citing AI-generated content, because emerging guidelines will always lag behind the current state of technology, and the way that technology is applied. If you are unsure of how to cite something, include a note in your text that describes how you used a certain tool. 

• When in doubt, remember that we cite sources for two primary purposes: first, to give credit to the author or creator; and second, to help others locate the sources you used in your research. Use these two concepts to help make decisions about using and citing AI-generated content.

Know the AI use and citation policy for the class, and/or publication for which you are writing. Be sure to cite when an AI tool was used to:

• Gather information
• Write text
• Edit Text
• Synthesize ideas or find connections
• Clean/manipulate data

Elements to save when using AI:

• Tool name and version (e.g., ChatGPT 3.5)
• Time and date of usage
• Prompt or query
• Response
• Follow up queries and responses
• Name of person who queried

Authors citing AI tools in their work should consider creating archived copies of the AI output.

• Creating persistent URLs that link to archived copies of AI-generated content enables easy sharing in references of published works.
• AI-generated content can be saved or archived as a document, image, or webpage.

Even with an archived copy, keep in mind the content may not be verifiable or reproducible because it will be affected by many factors, such as how many times a model had to be prompted to produce a specific answer, whether the output was impacted by server issues, or if an author influenced the output through feedback features present in some AI tools.