LibGuides: Citing AI tools: Saving AI content for replication and citations

Recording or archiving AI-generated content

Authors citing generative AI tools in their work should consider saving their prompts and responses, as well as creating archived copies of their AI output.

Creating persistent URLs that link to archived copies of AI-generated content makes it easier to share this content in publications.
AI-generated content can be saved or archived as a document, image, webpage, or natively within the generative AI tool that was used. Saving content in non-proprietary and commonly used file formats would be best.

Even with a saved copy, AI-generated content may not be verifiable or reproducible because of the non-deterministic nature of generative AI. How many times a model had to be prompted to produce a specific answer, how the output was impacted by server issues, and how an author might have influenced a tool's output in a non-transparent way are all barriers towards reproducibility in AI-generated content.

Linking to AI output

AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot have features that generate links that allow users to share their conversations. These links may not be reliable, so authors may choose to use products like A.I. Archives, ShareGPT, or PermaCC to share persistent links. Find more information about generative AI tools available at MIT here: https://ist.mit.edu/ai-tools

Microsoft Copilot
Formerly known as Bing AI or Bing Chat, Microsoft Copilot currently does not provide the means for archiving your chats. Users may still download a file containing the text from their chats, but this file will be missing essential metadata, such as the date of your chat, and if your chat involved a sequence of prompts, you will only be able to export the latest part of your chat.
Gemini
Gemini (by Google/Alphabet) allows users to share chats or single prompts using links. However, users with a work or school account with the Gemini for Google Workspace add-on can’t share chats.
ChatGPT
Users can create public links to entire chats. The shared links feature in ChatGPT does not preserve all the information that may be associated with a specific chat, such as documents that were attached to the chat or the time and date of the tool's usage. The shared links feature in ChatGPT has shown to be unstable at times, so relying on another means for saving your AI conversation might be best.

Here is more information about this feature.
A.I. Archives example
A.I. Archives is a Google Chrome browser extension that generates unique URLs for conversations with ChatGPT, Bard, or Claude, and lets users share their conversations publicly on the A.I. Archives website. A.I. Archives links contain the tool name, query, date of query, unique ID for archived document, and profile photo or initial of person who queried.
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine example
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine’s “Save Page Now” feature allows users to publicly archive webpages using their URLs. As of October 2023, the Wayback Machine can save ChatGPT conversations using the sharing links it generates, even if a user deletes their original ChatGPT conversation.
Perma.cc example
Perma.cc preserves the content of web pages as they existed at the time the Perma.cc link was created. Perma.cc makes a copy of the target web page, deposits it into the Perma.cc collection, and returns a unique, citable URL that points to the preserved record. As of February 2024, Perma.cc is able to successfully save the content of ChatGPT conversations using the shareable links provided by ChatGPT, even if the original conversation was later deleted by a user. MIT affiliates can use Perma.cc for free. See the Citation Management and Writing Tools guide from MIT Libraries for more information about this tool.