TL;DR Please replace the word "cite" with "reference" or "attribution" throughout.

As per our Code of Conduct, any content posted that is generated with artificial intelligence tools must be cited;

This is not what the Code of Conduct says.

Citing is not the same as referencing or acknowledging

In a science community, citing means to reference a publication. The publication does not change over time, and unless there is a global catastrophe, you will be able to find the publication, even if it was written a hundred years ago, in multiple libraries or databases. In modern times, many citable publications have a document object identifier, DOI. For example, DOI:10.1038/171737a0 is Watson's and Crick's 1953 paper on the double-helical model of DNA. Not the draft, not the version updated in 1967, not a version copy-edited by AI, but the published final version as printed.

The Code of Conduct, in the inauthentic usage section, says that plagiarism is not allowed, and links to referencing standards:

If you copy (or closely rephrase/reword) content that you did not create into something you post on Meta Stack Exchange (e.g., from another site or elsewhere on Meta Stack Exchange), make sure you do all of the following:

• Provide a link to the original page or answer

• Quote only the relevant portion

• Provide the name of the original author

This ensures that the original creator gets credit for their work.

This is not how you cite published sources, this is how you reference or attribute all kinds of information, a less rigorous standard. It is a bit like saying "(Prashanth Chandrasekar, personal communication)".

"This ensures that the original creator gets credit for their work."

If you reference text generated by AI, even in the most rigorous way (by providing a (perma-)link to a document that contains both prompt and generated material), the original creators of the work do not get credit. This is different from a scientific paper you cite because when it relies on the work of others, it will in turn cite sources that were used, giving a network of authors involved in building this knowledge. When you post AI-generated text, this chain of evidence gets disrupted, and you have assume responsibility for the posted text (and check whether it makes sense, and find authentic sources to support the claims it makes).

The example in the referencing help text

The example quotes a text from a web site. The web site does not give the author of the text. It references two works, but the links are dead and get rerouted. It would be nice to update the example so that it follows the referencing standard.

The definition of plagiarism

Plagiarism is not defined within the text, but instead links to the article on wikipedia. This article will change with time, so it would have been better to link to the version of the article at the time the help text was written. As is, we define plagiarism outside of StackExchange, but use the term in the code of conduct. Importantly, the outside definition may change to include text generated by AI, or stick with the more common text written by someone else (another human, someone who deserves credit).

It says "plagiarism is frowned on" but the Code of Conduct says it is not allowed on the site.

Why is this so hard

We are trying to make rules for a technology that is in its infancy. Today, ChatGPT might not be able to connect answers with sources, but in a couple of months the next iteration might. Right now, ChatGPT is horrible at math, but the GPT4/Wolfram combo is already pretty good. Also, different people have different standards. It is the job of the community to ensure that there is a single well-explained standard if that standard is used to expel community members who do not follow it.