The French have decided it is time to recognize the best novel written by AI — creating the first-ever major literary prize of its kind.The prize, called the Pascal Prize for AI Literature, will be awarded at the end of this year to the most ideal manuscript co-written by AI.Unfortunately, for all the anglophile AI bots hoping to have their work recognized and published, there will have no chance, since the prize is only for the French bots.As reported by French Language, the prize will be decided by a five-member jury, among them writers, critics, publishers, philosophers and journalists, all of whom will be announced in early November..The prize identifies the AI-written manuscripts as "author and the machine collaborat[ion]." In their application for the Pascal, individuals must submit the type of large language model (LLM), or AI chatbot they used, and the AI prompts that instructed the LLM to write the novel.The idea for the prize was created by Philippe Rodriguez, who is neither a writer, publisher, nor a journalist but a mergers and acquisitions specialist.Rodriguez named the prize after Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French mathematician and physicist who created the calculating machine and wrote the famous French book Pensées.The prize organizers say they're seeking a literary work that attempts to solve an "ecological, social and ethical challenge that threaten[s] humanity.".They also add the AI work should be unique and original by "bring[ing] something new, that do[es] not simply reproduce a format already produced in the past."This follows the scandal of Haitian-born, Quebec-based author Thélyson Orélien, whose novel C’était ça ou mourir was accused of being written by AI.As reported by CBC, Orélien's publisher has since confirmed that, indeed, the novel was written with the help of AI, and has ended its professional relationship with Orélien.Following the book's publication in the spring, an anonymous X account ran excerpts of the novel through AI detection software and shared the results publicly in late September, the same day the writing had won the literary prize, Prix du roman Fnac. .According to the software, Pangram, the novel was "100%" the work of AI."It is slander and heresy," Orélien previously wrote about the accusations, distributed through his Montreal-based publishing house Éditions du Boréal.Orélien also admitted that earlier in his work, he had plagiarised, though he labels these instances as "unacceptable" mistakes from his youth.
