Prix Goncourt winner Philippe Jaenada admits using AI in his novel

Philippe Jaenada won the Prix Goncourt on Tuesday for L’Inconnue du quai de Javel. The next day he told France Inter radio that he had turned to AI three times while writing the novel.

The first use, he said, was to slip a ChatGPT-written sentence into the book to play with the reader. He said he told the Goncourt jurors which sentence it was only on the day of the award. He also put in a section of AI-generated text to poke fun at ChatGPT, which he said gave absurd answers about a technical detail, and used it for research.

The admission came a day after Jaenada collected the award. In September, the Académie Goncourt had removed Thélyson Orélien’s C’était ça ou Mourir from its longlist.

The Canadian-Haitian writer’s debut had sold more than 35,000 copies and won the Prix du roman Fnac. Journalist Samuel Fitoussi ran it through the AI-detection tool Pangram and concluded much of it was machine-generated. The accuracy of AI-detection software has been called into question.

In a 25 September statement, the academy said analyses showed the novel was in all likelihood very largely the product of an artificial intelligence. It said it wanted to protect the integrity of a prize honouring literature written by women and men.

In an October statement, Orélien called the allegations slander and heresy and said not a single sentence in the book was created by a machine. In the same statement he admitted plagiarism in earlier work and apologised for claiming as his own texts that were not his.

A week later, his Canadian publisher Boréal announced that fresh evidence contradicted the author’s repeated assurances and indicated that AI had played a part in producing the text. The company then severed its ties with him.

Jaenada had spoken about AI before winning. In an interview with 20 Minutes, he asked whether a film director would hide using special effects. He predicted it would soon be impossible to say a text was 100% human-written.

He also insisted AI will never be able to write a book with its heart, its soul, its memories. On France Inter he said AI cannot be held back and cannot be pretended away. He said it has to be used, but first acknowledged, and above all tamed, so that it is useful.

The contrast between the two cases prompted some accusations of a racial double standard online. One user on X wrote: "So when it’s an old white man it’s fine, but when it’s a young writer of colour he gets stoned in the public square?"

Another said Jaenada had faced no media lynching and no banishment over his use of AI, a leniency denied to Thélyson Orélien.