Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 2—AI as a search engine and AI integrated into common software

Since the APA Style team wrote our 2023 post about citing ChatGPT, the landscape of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has changed dramatically. You have likely seen, and probably used, other AI toolsopens in new window in the meantime, and using these tools for assistance in the writing process may no longer seem unusual.

Although it’s still not a good idea to submit AI-generated work as though you did it yourself—doing so would be considered unethical, for example, academic misconduct for students—there are many potentially legitimate ways to use AI tools within the context of academic writing. For example, some authors—be they students, researchers, reviewers, instructors, or others—are using AI tools to search for information, summarize literature in conjunction with reading it, edit or analyze their own writing, brainstorm ideas, translate text, proofread for consistency and style, generate tables and figures, create and refine code, and much more. However, the details of what AI use is allowed and how it should be disclosed depend on many factors, such as instructor, departmental, and publisher policies. And of course, it is possible to cite AI tools without using them, such as if you are writing a paper about AI.

Because there are many issues to explore surrounding AI, we have split our advice into different posts. This will also allow us to add additional posts as needed in the future. This post is about two cases in which it is likely not necessary to cite or disclosure the use of AI, which is when using AI as a search engine and when AI is integrated into common software.

Additional posts are available on these topics:

• How to cite AI chats and AI tools generally in APA Style
• Is AI “allowed” in APA Style?

With Google and other search engines integrating AI into searchopens in new window and AI tools increasingly able to cite their sources, the distinction between traditional search engines and AI-powered search engines is growing slim. If you used AI as a search engine or intermediary to find information, similar to using Google search or a database search, it is in most cases not necessary to cite AI at all. It is the same as if you used Google search to find a source: After reading those sources, if you quote or paraphrase from them, cite those individual sources, not the Google search results.

If you use an AI tool to search, make sure the AI cites sources and that you visit and read the sources yourself to ensure that they are real, not hallucinations or confabulations of the AI, as well as trustworthy and relevant for use in your paper. Citations that do not support or mischaracterize information are a longstanding issue in scientific research, affecting up to 16% of citations across disciplines (Wakeling et al., 2025). AI-generated summaries may perpetuate the problem, with recent research indicating that AI-generated summaries are 5 times more likely to contain overgeneralization than human-generated summaries, with newer AI models showing stronger generalization bias than older models, and AI overgeneralizing in 26%–73% of cases (Peters & Chin-Yee, 2025). We strongly recommend double-checking all AI-provided information, data, or reference sources with other trusted, authoritative sources. Keep humans involved; do not stop your research process after asking AI and just cite AI.

You also do not need references and citations when using common software that incorporates AI. For example, if you’ve used Canva to create an image, you don’t need to create a reference for Canva, and you don’t need to indicate that you used any AI functionality within Canva.

Likewise, some versions of Microsoft Word use Copilot to help refine your writing. Using built-in word-processing features like this, which may in turn use AI, is similar to using the spell-check, grammar-check, and other helpful tools within a word processor. You wouldn’t cite spell-check, so you don’t need to cite Copilot within Microsoft Word. In fact, even common word-processing features like spell-check may (or may not) be using AI now or in the future—and it may not always be apparent to users that AI is involved. Thus, per the guidelines in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual, the mere use of common software like Microsoft Word does not need to be cited, which includes AI within the software.

As with most of APA Style, we provide guidelines, not rules, so there are of course cases in which you might disclose use of AI and cite it, even when using AI as a search engine or within common software.

For example, literature reviews, metasyntheses, or meta-analyses sometimes include a discussion of the literature search strategy. Just as you might mention which databases and search terms you used in a traditional approach to a literature search, you could state that you used AI to search, name the tools, and provide citations and references for them. Although in this case you would not include references for the databases, you would for the AI. Why the difference? Because AI is a newer technology than Google or academic research databases, and because some AI tools are specialized or customizable, providing citations and references helps readers. For the appropriate formats, refer to the post on citing generative AI in APA Style.

Likewise, you would discuss AI when it is incorporated into specialized equipment. For example, if you used AI-powered glasses as part of your experiment, you would provide information about the glasses in the text of the paper so that readers would understand which glasses you used, including the model name, manufacturer, and AI model powering them. The approach is similar to describing the use of other specialized equipment, such as eye-tracking software.

Please let us know what AI-related questions you have in the comments. We also look forward to you sharing your thoughts and experiences with AI with the community so that we on the APA Style team can continue to make useable, helpful guidance on this topic.

Peters, U., & Chin-Yee, B. (2025). Generalization bias in large language model summarization of scientific research. Royal Society Open Science, 12(2), Article 241776. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241776opens in new window

Wakeling, S., Paramita, M. L., & Pinfield, S. (2025). How do authors perceive the way their work is cited? Findings from a large-scale survey on quotation accuracy. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.70000opens in new window