How can I implement citation references in fine-tuned OpenAI model responses?

Below is an explanation of how you can implement citation-style responses using the OpenAI API, based on documented prompt engineering strategies:

Using Reference Text for Citation

The idea is to supply a trusted reference as part of your prompt and instruct the model to craft its answer solely using that reference. If the reference contains the needed information, the answer should include appropriate citations. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Provide a Reference Document:
   Include the text (or texts) that you trust for the answer as part of your prompt. This is usually done by delimiting the document with a clear marker such as triple quotes.

2. Instruct the Model:
   In your system prompt, clearly instruct the model how to use the provided reference and how to annotate its answer with citations. A sample instruction might look like this:

   PLAINTEXTCopied
   SYSTEM:
   You will be provided with a document delimited by triple quotes and a question.
   Your task is to answer the question using only the provided document and to cite the passage(s) of the document used to answer.
   If the document does not contain the information needed to answer, simply write: "Insufficient information."

   This kind of instruction tells the model that its response must rely on the supplied reference—and if the reference doesn’t cover the topic, the answer should reflect that.

3. Request Citation Formatting:
   You can specify the citation format (for example, JSON or a simple inline reference) so that the answer can programmatically match the cited text. For instance, you might say:

   PLAINTEXTCopied
   When citing, use the following format: {"citation": "quoted passage from the document"}

Important Considerations

• Dynamic Links vs. Static References:
  The approach above requires you to supply the relevant reference material. Unlike a system that automatically retrieves and links to live web content, this method depends on the context you provide. Currently, there isn’t out-of-the-box functionality in the API that fetches or verifies external URLs on the fly.

• Fine-tuning and Citation:
  Asking for citation references directly from a fine-tuned model isn’t supported automatically unless you include the necessary instructions and data in the fine-tune dataset. The idea of a “third key” for citations you mentioned is not part of the current fine-tuning process. The strategy is to use a carefully crafted prompt that guides the model to include citations from the supplied reference text.

Summary

While OpenAI models can be prompted to include citations if you supply the source material in the prompt along with explicit instructions, the API does not automatically verify responses with live external links or generate citations independently. If you envision a system that provides dynamic, link-backed answers, it would require building an external retrieval layer that fetches documents and then presents them to the model in your prompt.

Using these techniques, you can significantly improve the verifiability of the responses in your applications.