Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
To Cite or Not to Cite AI
Wondering whether you need to disclose when AI helped you write a blog, email, or proposal? You’re not alone—and this episode is your permission slip to stop second-guessing.
In this solo milestone episode, I (Kendra Corman) explore one of the most common questions I get from clients and students: “Do I have to cite AI if I used it to write something?”
As someone who’s been ghostwriting for decades and now leans on AI to streamline my work (without letting it take over), I break down when to cite, when not to, and why the intent behind your prompt matters more than the tool itself.
We cover:
🎯 When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Cite AI
• Why using AI doesn’t automatically mean you need to disclose it
• The ghostwriting comparison that changes how you see AI tools
• How to know if your prompt makes you the author—or the machine
• What style guides like APA and Chicago actually say about AI
✍️ Using AI Ethically Without Losing Your Voice
• The difference between AI-generated and AI-assisted content
• Real examples of detailed prompts vs. generic outputs
• Why editing and injecting your experiences is everything
• Why AI is like a really good intern—if you’re the boss
🔍 Avoiding Plagiarism and Building Credibility
• The plagiarism pitfalls of lazy prompts
• How to check and edit outputs so they reflect your expertise
• Why it’s okay to use AI—but not okay to fake originality
• How to frame AI as your partner, not your replacement
💬 The Big Takeaway
Whether you're writing proposals, content, or emails—your thoughts, stories, and strategy matter most. If AI is just helping you organize and phrase things more clearly, you likely don’t need to cite it. But if it's doing the thinking for you? That’s when transparency counts.
“AI helps express your thoughts better. But if it is your thoughts? Then give it credit.” – Kendra Corman
🛠 If you’re tired of worrying about whether you’re ‘doing it right’ with AI, this episode offers clarity, confidence, and a practical way to move forward—without sacrificing your voice or your values.
🎧 Listen now and decide for yourself: Are you Team Citation… or Team ‘Typing Buddy with Benefits’?
📬 Connect with me:
Website: https://kendracorman.com
Email: support@kendracorman.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendracorman/
Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?
Check and see how I am using it for FREE on YouTube.
From "Holy cow, it can do that?" to "Wait, how does this work again?" – I've got all your AI curiosities covered. It's the perfect after-podcast snack for your tech-hungry brain.
Watch here
Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome to episode 300 of Imperfect Marketing. I am super excited to be your host, kendra Korman, and I am so excited that you have joined me in this journey, whether this is your first episode or your 300th. Thank you so much for tuning in and thank you so much also all along for the feedback and the inspiration that has kept me going, hopefully giving you very good, helpful tips along the way. Today we're going to be talking about a question I have been getting a lot, and that is to cite or not to cite AI. Do you have to say AI did it? Did you have to say that this robot helped me write what this is? And I think it's pretty cut and dry and it just depends on how much the AI did for you. For years I have ghostwritten blogs, white papers, press releases, quotes, things like that Probably decades, if we want to get specific, and there's no citation that the wonderful writing wizardry of Kendrick Horman assisted in writing this piece, even though there probably should be, and so I didn't get credit. What's the difference? If AI is my ghostwriter? This is what I think. I think it's again it's how much did the AI do? Did the AI do your job? Did it come up with the ideas and write them? Was your prompt, super generic, of give me a blog post about the pros and cons of pizza? Did you change three commas on the output, or change the dashes to commas on the output and call it a day? Is it giving you facts and figures and you're just saying I'm sure that that's correct, then I would cite it. I would say that you need to say that AI generated that. But if you're doing AI-assisted content writing, not AI generated right, you're giving it your ideas, your thoughts, your examples, your experiences then you're the brains behind the operation and then I don't think you need to cite it as much. If it's just a typing buddy with benefits, right. If you've rewritten, remixed and injected your personality into it, I don't think you need to cite it. And if you're using it like a thesaurus that actually just understands what you mean, it speaks. You know fluent Kendra, which, thank goodness for me, it does actually speak fluent Kendra, which can sometimes be a foreign language. I think that's when you don't have to cite it. Now I got some other questions at a recent AI training that I did, which was well.
Speaker 1:Ai plagiarizes a lot. I haven't caught it plagiarizing in a long time. I think the more generic your prompt is, again, the less work that you're doing, the higher likelihood that you could potentially have some plagiarism. But again, I think that's stuff that you want to watch and be careful of to make sure that you're injecting it with your experiences, your insights and your knowledge. It's not coming up with anything new, so don't make it. You can give it that. You can give it your experiences and your information.
Speaker 1:Now, part of that whole plagiarism thing is I'm adjunct faculty at a local university here in Michigan and all of the APA and Chicago styles and things like that all have a way to cite AI. You can Google how to cite AI and it will tell you how to cite AI. Well, one of the citations I found was chat GPT response to and then it's got in quotations article explain how to make pizza dough from common household ingredients Open AI March 7th 2023, which no AI was there, okay, and then the link to the chat for Open AI. I think if you're writing that simple and that's your prompt, then yeah, you need to cite it. But if you're giving it detailed instructions, if you're being specific, if you're bossing it around like there's no tomorrow, you're making it work for you and you're saying something like take these seven bullet points about email marketing trends and draft a conversational intro paragraph that mentions my dog, bernie, includes a subtle reference to Taylor Swift's recent album or tour and insert more stuff here. I don't really think you need to cite it. That was your idea to mention Bernie and to mention Taylor Swift and to the seven trends that you're seeing.
Speaker 1:All of that is you. All it's doing is organizing your thoughts and putting it into a little bit better than the stream of consciousness that you probably typed it in there as right, and I think that that's okay. And then, once you get the output, then you edit it right, you review it, you make sure everything is right and that it sounds like you and that there isn't anything of in today's changing world, in today's dynamic world, in today's you know, whatever kind of world it's going to have at the beginning of your entire blog post, like it seems to do almost all the time. Once you take that out right, it's more you and it's all your work and it's all your thoughts. Ai is helping you express your thoughts better, more effectively and efficiently. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that and I don't think AI gets the credit in those cases. But if it's doing all the work, then I think you need to give it the credit.
Speaker 1:Now, are you team citation or team?
Speaker 1:What AI doesn't know won't hurt it.
Speaker 1:I'd love to know what you think on this. Do you need to cite AI? Now, I'm not saying hide that you're using AI. You don't have to do that. Everybody knows I use AI, right. I mean, hopefully you do by now, because I talk about it all the time and it saves me 30 to 40 hours a week. But my outputs and my inputs are all me and all edited by me, and I don't just take any of it for granted, just copy and pasting out of any AI system.
Speaker 1:So, again, you don't have to hide that you're leveraging AI.
Speaker 1:But I also don't necessarily think you need to cite it when you're using AI the right way and you're leveraging it to help organize your thoughts and write your thoughts.
Speaker 1:So, again, I'd love to hear what you're thinking about that. Feel free to reach out to me at support at kendraormancom. I'd love to know your you're thinking about that. Feel free to reach out to me at support at KendraCormancom. I'd love to know your thoughts and I encourage anybody who disagrees with me to let me know, because I'd like to better understand that other perspective. But if I'm doing 90% of the work and all it's doing is organizing my thoughts and saving me some time on that first draft, it could be an intern right, and so I really want you to think about that and think about how you're leveraging it as you move forward. Thank you so much for tuning in to this milestone episode of Imperfect Marketing. I really appreciate you being here. If you would help me out, I'd love it if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening and watching. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your day.
