Goncourt winner Philippe Jaenada says he used ChatGPT in his novel

A disclosure the day after the prize

Philippe Jaenada won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, on Nov. 3 for “L’Inconnue du quai de Javel” (Flammarion). The next day, the 62-year-old author told France Inter radio that he had turned to AI “three times” while writing the book. According to The Guardian and Euronews, he first slipped in a sentence written by ChatGPT in order to “play with the reader.” He said he revealed which sentence it was only to the Goncourt jurors on the day of the award. He also included a passage of AI-generated text to poke fun at ChatGPT, which gave “completely absurd answers about a technical detail.” The third use was research.

His remarks were made in French. In the Guardian’s translation, he said: “I don’t think AI can be held back. We can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.” He added that AI has to be acknowledged, tamed and made useful. According to the Guardian, Jaenada had defended using AI before the award, asking the newspaper 20 Minutes whether a film director would hide the use of special effects. He still insists AI “will never be able to write a book with its heart, its soul, its memories.”

The Orélien affair and a double standard debate

The disclosure came after the Académie Goncourt dropped another novel over suspected AI use in September. “C’était ça ou mourir,” the debut by Canadian-Haitian writer Thélyson Orélien, 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; such tools’ accuracy is disputed. On Sept. 25, the academy said the novel was “in all likelihood very largely the product of an artificial intelligence” and removed it from its longlist. Orélien denied the allegations. According to the Guardian, his Canadian publisher Boréal later said new evidence showed AI had been used and ended its relationship with him.

The Guardian reports that some users online accused the literary world of a racial double standard in how the two writers were treated. According to Euronews, some readers call AI as unavoidable as a spellchecker, while others want authors to write on their own. The Guardian said it had approached the academy for comment.

The prize and the novel

Jaenada won on the first round of voting, six votes to three, over Sylvain Prudhomme’s “De l’autre côté du lac,” after four previous shortlistings. The novel reconstructs the unsolved 1949 murder of Louise Cansot, a 29-year-old artists’ model known in Montparnasse as “the woman with 100 portraits.” The prize comes with only a symbolic 10-euro cheque. According to Euronews, all four finalists were published by houses belonging to the Madrigall group.