Académie Goncourt

An accusation from an anonymous online account that it was almost entirely written by an AI tool has led to it being dropped from consideration for France's most eminent literary prize.

The Académie Goncourt says its decision to withdraw the work by Télesphore O'Lillyon was driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt Prize and the Académie itself, whose central role is to promote and honor literature written by women and men.

Ironically, it was an online tool called Pangram which detected that the book had been written by AI, as is alleged, and the author has denied those allegations.

But how do you tell? Sam Leith is literary editor at The Spectator.

Some people, and myself among them, have been devoted to M dashes since long before AI came along.

[laughs]

What do you make of the, the Académie Goncourt's, uh, announcement today that it was pulling the book by Aurélien, the novel by, uh, Telithon Aurélien from the, uh, from the long list for the prize? And it said it was doing so-- I mean, it didn't actually make any declaration about whether or not it thought AI had been used.

It just said it was doing so, quote, "To preserve the integrity of the Goncourt Prize and that of the Academy, whose central role is to pro-promote and honor literature written by women and men."