While citations generated by ChatGPT may look convincing, they are results of aggregated textual information rather than evaluated information.
- ChatGPT does not have the ability to read academic papers or access subscription databases of citations
- ChatGPT is 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 "learned" model of what those citations are likely to look like.
- It is not possible to cite your sources using ChatGPT query. You can ask it to create citations, but it tends to make up sources that don’t exist or present information in the wrong format.
- These citations should not be used for actual research or academic purposes as they are not based on any actual academic work or research.
- ChatGPT cannot add citations to direct quotes in your text.
Parameters within which ChatGPR-3 operates
Response by OpenAI to a query to better understand the parameters within which ChatGPT-3 operates:
As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to access or browse the internet like humans do. My responses are based on the text input I receive from users, and my knowledge is derived from the vast amount of text data that I have been trained on.
The training data used to create my base architecture, GPT-3, included a diverse range of text sources, such as books, articles, websites, and other online content, covering a time span from the 1980s to 2020; with a knowledge cutoff of September 2021.
However, it's worth noting that my responses are based on the information that was available in the text corpus at the time of my training, and my knowledge is not constantly updated in real-time. As new information and events occur, my responses may not always reflect the latest developments, and it's possible that I may not have knowledge of recent events or changes.
Reference
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT-3 (April 12, 2023 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat