In a move described by administrators as "boldly efficient," leading universities have formally approved the citation format "I asked AI" for use in academic papers, legal arguments, grant proposals, and Thanksgiving debates.
The update follows what officials called "widespread informal compliance," after students, researchers, and frankly all of us discovered that asking a large language model feels remarkably similar to research, except with fewer tabs open and dramatically improved confidence.
We, too, have felt the warm glow of a beautifully formatted answer. It arrives so calmly. So certain. It even uses bullet points.
The forthcoming 2026 Modern Language Association style guide reportedly includes this sample:
The Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648 (I asked AI).
For advanced scholarship, authors may append the optional qualifier:
(It seemed pretty sure.)
Law schools have embraced the change with characteristic composure. A recent appellate brief cited "ChatGPT, personal communication" to clarify a complex question of outer space salvage law. When asked whether the model's training data was discoverable, one attorney replied, "Objection, relevance."
Of course, we ask it things. Constantly. We ask it about octopuses. We ask it about obscure treaties. We ask it about whether we are remembering that one theorem correctly. The answers arrive with impeccable punctuation and a confidence level that could power a small municipality.
A leaked draft of the new AI Citation Manual (AICM) outlines standardized formats:
- APA-AI: (ChatGPT, confident tone, 2026)
- MLA-AI: "AI." Internet, broadly. Accessed gently.
- Chicago-AI: 1. I asked. 2. It answered.
For interdisciplinary research, the manual recommends the flexible construction:
According to several models, approximately.
Historians have expressed philosophical curiosity. "There was something beautiful about tracing ideas across centuries," said one professor of early modern Europe. "But the summary was extremely tidy."
Librarians, steady custodians of intellectual maps, have offered a reminder. "Citations aren't decorative," said one archivist while carefully shelving a 19th-century monograph. "They tell you where knowledge came from."
When informed that the model was trained on "a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available text," the archivist nodded and replied, "So… somewhere on Earth."
Undergraduate adoption has surged. The phrase "I asked AI" integrates seamlessly with other academic staples, including:
- "As we can clearly see,"
- "It is widely known,"
- and "This suggests that society."
Industry leaders insist the shift represents evolution. "We used to outsource memory to books," said one startup founder. "Now we outsource epistemology."
In response to the trend, several universities have introduced workshops titled Tracing the Source (Optional). Attendance remains spiritually strong.
Meanwhile, venture-backed startups are racing to launch "Citation-as-a-Service" platforms, where users can input a claim and receive a pre-formatted reference reading:
Verified by AI. Probably.
One beta user reported success using the format in a performance review:
"I consistently exceed expectations (I asked AI)."
The claim was accepted.
At press time, scholars confirmed that confidence and correctness remain statistically adjacent, and that the Renaissance officially began when someone clicked a citation.