Goncourt Prize winner Jaenada speaks about using AI — Der Spiegel

In France, Goncourt Prize winner, writer Philippe Jaenada, reported limited use of artificial intelligence while working on the novel L'Inconnue du Quai Javel. According to him, he hid one sentence created by ChatGPT in the book to play with readers. The day after the prize was awarded, the author spoke about this on France Inter, Der Spiegel reports.

AI for play and research

Jaenada said that after receiving the award, he told the nine members of the Goncourt Prize jury about the hidden sentence. He also turned to ChatGPT to mock the sometimes absurd responses of the interactive system and used it for research.

The writer believes there is no point in pretending that artificial intelligence does not exist. In his view, such tools should be explored and used, but AI should not replace authors and should be useful.

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The 62-year-old Jaenada is known for thorough archival research into historical criminal cases. In the award-winning novel, he tells the story of a young model who was murdered in Paris in 1949.

Debate surrounding another contender

Jaenada's statement came amid a debate over the use of AI in literature. Earlier, Haitian-Canadian author Telison Aurelien was removed from the preliminary selection for the prize after accusations of significant AI use.

Aurelien denied that artificial intelligence had created a substantial part of his novel C'était ça ou mourir, but acknowledged using the technology for translation and research. In October, his Canadian publisher ended its cooperation with the author, stating that new analyses indicated AI had also been used in the writing process. At the same time, the publisher noted that it was impossible to determine the exact scale of such use.