Goncourt scandal over suspected AI-written novel sparks a wider reckoning among writers
The removal of Thélyson Orélien from the Goncourt prize's finalist list, over suspicions he used artificial intelligence to write his novel, has pushed French writers to publicly question their own relationship to tools like ChatGPT.
The Haitian-Canadian author Thélyson Orélien was dropped from the Goncourt shortlist after suspicions emerged that his novel "C'était ça ou mourir" had been written with the help of artificial intelligence, according to Bibliobs (Le Nouvel Obs). The episode has rattled French publishing and prompted a string of writers to speak publicly about what AI tools mean for their craft.
Bibliobs reports that authors including Virginie Despentes, Philippe Jaenada, Pierre Assouline and Aurélien Bellanger have begun questioning their own working methods in the wake of the affair. One writer, quoted anonymously in the title of the piece, described ChatGPT as a tool that "makes me go much faster, but much more dangerously."
Le Monde's Livres section has devoted a podcast episode to the controversy, titled "IA dans la littérature : prompter, c'est tromper ?" Journalists Michaël Szadkowski and Nicolas Six, from the paper's Pixels desk, examine how the Orélien affair is forcing the literary world to confront the use of generative AI in manuscript writing.
Separately, Bibliobs spoke with Rodney Saint-Eloi, the Haitian-Canadian writer and founder of the Montreal publishing house Mémoire d'encrier, who recalled Orélien's arrival in Quebec just after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Saint-Eloi described being "effrayé par la brutalité de l'exécution d'un être humain" in how the affair has unfolded, and reflected on what literature represents for his generation: a way out, a door through which to escape.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
