Goncourt drops novel from shortlist over suspected AI use
An Observador report has shaken the French literary world, and it deserves close attention. On a Friday in September, the Académie Goncourt announced that the novel by the Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien would be withdrawn from the list of candidates for France's most important literary prize. The academy said it was protecting the integrity of the prize and that it opposes the writing of texts with the help of artificial intelligence. It will only comment again on 6 October, when the finalists are announced.
The book is «C'était ça ou mourir», published in March by Éditions du Boréal in Quebec and in August by Éditions Grasset in France. The suspicions emerged on 21 September, the same day Orélien received the Prix Fnac for best novel. An anonymous X account called “Balance ton Claude” claimed the text was almost entirely generated by AI and that several passages scored “100% AI” on the Pangram detector. Observador clarifies that the account is in fact a collective that includes the essayist and Le Figaro columnist Samuel Fitoussi.
Grasset, part of the Vivendi group, dismissed the allegations as fake news and argued that AI detectors are themselves fallible systems. The author categorically denies the claims: he says the repetitions point to Haitian and Caribbean literary tradition and to his own poetics, that he has always enjoyed writing, and that he is assembling a dossier with his editors to prove authorship. He has also said he has suffered racist attacks since moving to France.
Since 1903 the Goncourt has been awarded by the “Les Dix”, ten writers who choose the best novel of the year in French. The cash prize is symbolic, but it can multiply sales and translations.
I have no way of knowing who is right, and the detection tools are indeed debatable. But the case shows how the question “who wrote this?” has come to weigh on literary prizes.
Source: Observador
The book is «C'était ça ou mourir», published in March by Éditions du Boréal in Quebec and in August by Éditions Grasset in France. The suspicions emerged on 21 September, the same day Orélien received the Prix Fnac for best novel. An anonymous X account called “Balance ton Claude” claimed the text was almost entirely generated by AI and that several passages scored “100% AI” on the Pangram detector. Observador clarifies that the account is in fact a collective that includes the essayist and Le Figaro columnist Samuel Fitoussi.
Grasset, part of the Vivendi group, dismissed the allegations as fake news and argued that AI detectors are themselves fallible systems. The author categorically denies the claims: he says the repetitions point to Haitian and Caribbean literary tradition and to his own poetics, that he has always enjoyed writing, and that he is assembling a dossier with his editors to prove authorship. He has also said he has suffered racist attacks since moving to France.
Since 1903 the Goncourt has been awarded by the “Les Dix”, ten writers who choose the best novel of the year in French. The cash prize is symbolic, but it can multiply sales and translations.
I have no way of knowing who is right, and the detection tools are indeed debatable. But the case shows how the question “who wrote this?” has come to weigh on literary prizes.
Source: Observador
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