Answered By: Trenia Napier
Last Updated: Apr 18, 2023     Views: 103

No. Citations from ChatGPT are not real.

While citations generated by ChatGPT may look convincing, they are in essence made up on the spot. ChatGPT is a chatbot built on a language modeling AI that predicts the most likely words to come next in a sequence.  That means it will generate citations, upon request, based on it's model of what those citations are likely to look like.  It is not a search engine that will locate real citations for you.

But don't just take my word for it:

 

A ChatGPT transcript which reads Question: are the citations generated by ChatGPT real? Answer: No, the academic citations generated by ChatGPT are not real. ChatGPT is a machine learning model that generates text based on patterns it has learned from vast amounts of data, but it does not have the ability to read academic papers or access databases of citations. The citations generated by ChatGPT are instead a product of its language model and the patterns it has learned from analyzing text. These citations should not be used for actual research or academic purposes as they are not based on any actual academic work or research.

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