(Artist Surname, Year)
Artist Surname, First Initial. Second Initial. (Year). Title of the artwork [Description e.g. Clip art, Photograph]. Website name, if applicable. URL of specific visual work
(Gossaert, 1507-1508)
Gossaert, J. (1507-1508). The holy family [Painting]. J. Paul Getty Museum. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/595/jan-gossaert-the-holy-family-netherlandish-about-1507-1508/
(Creator Surname, Year)
Creator Surname, First Initial. (Year). Title [medium]. Database. Retrieved from URL
(Tanning, 1947)
Tanning, D. (1947). A very happy picture (Un tableau très heureux) [Oil painting]. Artstor. Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.10596697
While APA does not currently have formal rules for citing images created by GenAI, their official style blog does outline how to cite generative AI: Official APA Style Blog: Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 1 - Reference formats (Blog post, September 9, 2025).).
Remember that if you are including the image in your paper, you will need to include a figure number for it, as well as a note for context. For more information about setting up figures in your paper, see the APA's Official Style Blog on Figure Setup.
(AI Company Name, Year)
AI Company Name. (Year). Model name (Version) [Large language model or description of AI software]. URL
(Microsoft & OpenAI, 2025)
Microsoft & OpenAI. (2025). Microsoft Copilot (July 2025 version) [Large language model]. https://copilot.microsoft.com/
Figure 1
Example of an AI-generated image
Note: Image generated using the prompt "Colouring page featuring a cartoon-style character of Rufus," by Microsoft & OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, 2025 (https://copilot.microsoft.com/)
While APA does not have specific rules about citing images created by GenAI, they have written an additional blog post titled Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 2—AI as a search engine and AI integrated into common software where they provide the following guidance:
"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," (McAdoo et al., 2025)
References
McAdoo, T., Denneny, S., & Lee, C. (2025, September 9). Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 2 - AI as a search engine and AI integrated into common software. APA Style Blog. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-generative-ai-search-software
If, however, you generate an image and then take it outside of the software (for example, generating an image in Canva and then using it in PowerPoint), you should cite the image using the guidance in the box above.