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Referencing for Information Technology

Information for how to reference sources using IEEE Style in business and technical writing.

How to Reference AI Generated Material

General Information on referencing AI

You will need to check with your Lecturer/Unit Coordinator or consult your unit descriptions to confirm whether you are permitted to use Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT in your unit assessments. Units taught at MIT may differ as to the permitted usage of AI tools.

Warning: some AI tools will generate fictional references, that may appear real, and may use real journal titles and corresponding citation details, but the articles will be non-existent. Care should be taken when quoting citations from AI tools.

IEEE does not have a style guide for Generative AI text. The appropriate reference type style information to use is Software. For this you, will need to include the information below.


How to reference AI generated material

Here are the basic formats for referencing AI tools used in your papers. The grey boxes highlight the information that needs to change in each reference. You do not include them in your own work.

Pay close attention to the punctuation and capitalisation in each of the formats and the examples below.

Reference list format

[#] Title of Software: (version or year), Publisher Name.Accessed: Date (when applicable). [Type of Medium].  Available: site/path/file 

Reference list example

[1] ChatGPT (2023), OpenAI. Accessed Jan 23, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://chat.openai.com/ 
[2] Bard (2024), Google AI. Accessed Feb 1, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://bard.google.com/chat

 

Style Notes:

  • Title of software: Name of software, eg Bard or Chatgpt

  • Publisher name: Company that publishes the software eg OpenAI or Google AI

  • Version or year: Year of software or version number

  • Available site path: home page URL of the software

  • Describe how you have used the AI tool in an appropriate section of your work

  • Month abbreviations: Abbreviated months (e.g. Jun, Sep) are used in IEEE.

  • Please see the IEEE Reference Guide for the list of all abbreviations.

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