The winner of France’s most prestigious literary prize, Philippe Jaenada, admitted that he used artificial intelligence while writing his novel. This happened less than a day after receiving the award — even though the jury of the same prize had previously disqualified another book over suspicions that AI had been used, UNN reports, citing The Guardian.
Philippe Jaenada, who on Tuesday received the Prix Goncourt for his novel "The Stranger from the Quai de Javel" (L’Inconnue du quai de Javel), said on Wednesday during an interview with the radio station France Inter that he had turned to artificial intelligence "three times" while working on the book.
According to him, the first time he inserted a sentence generated by ChatGPT was to "play with the reader." He said that he revealed which sentence it was only to the jury members — and only on the day the award was presented. "If this becomes known, I will know where the leak came from," he said.
He also added an AI-generated passage to the text — partly to make fun of ChatGPT (which had produced "completely absurd answers about one technical detail"), and partly to gather material.
"I don’t think the development of AI can be stopped. We cannot pretend that it does not exist," said the 62-year-old Jaenada. "It must be used, but first we must acknowledge its existence and, above all, tame it. It must be useful."
The admission came shortly after, in September, the Goncourt Academy removed from its longlist the novel "Either This or Death" (C’était ça ou Mourir) by Téléson Aurélien. The debut book by this Canadian-Haitian writer became a genuine sensation of France’s "literary season" (the period from late August to early November, when the largest number of new books are released in France). The novel sold more than 35,000 copies and even won the Fnac Prize (Prix du roman Fnac). However, journalist Samuel Fitoussi examined the text using an AI-detection tool — Pangram — and concluded that a significant portion of it had been generated by a machine. Nevertheless, the accuracy of artificial-intelligence detection software is currently in doubt. In a statement dated September 25, the academy said that an analysis conducted by researchers and journalists showed that the novel "is, in all likelihood, to a significant extent a product of artificial intelligence." The academy said it sought to protect the reputation of the prize, which is intended to recognize "literature written by women and men," and to send a "clear signal" that it does not approve of texts created with the help of AI.
In an October statement, Aurélien called the accusations "slander and heresy," adding that "not a single sentence in this book was created by a machine." In the same statement, he acknowledged plagiarism in his earlier work, apologizing for presenting "other people’s texts as his own." The following week, the author’s Canadian publisher, Boréal, said that new evidence indicated that AI had been used in writing the work — contrary to the author’s repeated assurances — and ended its collaboration with him.
Even before the award ceremony, Jaenada had defended the use of AI. "Would a film director hide the fact that they use special effects?" he asked in an interview with 20 Minutes, suggesting that it would soon become impossible to claim that a text had been written exclusively by a human. At the same time, he insisted that AI "will never be able to write a book by putting its heart, soul, and memories into it."
This contrast prompted accusations of racial double standards online. "So when it’s an older white man, it’s fine, but when it’s a young writer of another race, he is publicly stoned?" one user wrote on the social network X. Another noted that Jaenada had faced neither "a media lynching" nor "exile" for using AI — "a leniency that Téléson Aurélien did not receive."
Jaenada won in the first round of voting, receiving six votes against three cast for Sylvain Prudhomme’s novel "On the Other Side of the Lake" (De l’autre côté du lac). Jaenada, who had previously been shortlisted for the prize four times, specializes in reexamining old crimes committed in France. His winning book reconstructs the circumstances of an unsolved 1949 murder—the death of 29-year-old Breton Louise Canceau, an artist’s model who was known in Paris’s Montparnasse district as the "woman of 100 portraits."
Although the cash prize amounts to only a symbolic €10, this literary award is the best-known in France and attracts the greatest attention.