WRITER WINS PRESTIGIOUS PRIZE DESPITE USING AI

PARIS, NOVEMBER 3 /SRNA/ – French author Philippe Jaenada has won the Prix Goncourt, one of France's most prestigious literary awards, despite having used artificial intelligence while writing his book, Britain's The Telegraph reported.

Jaenada, 62, won the prize for his book "The Unknown Woman of the Quai de Javel".

The author prides himself on being an "old-school" writer and doesn’t even own a mobile phone, but he used AI to help with his research for the book.

He defended the use of AI, asking the audience whether a film director would hide the fact that he had used special effects.

"Soon we will no longer assume that any text was written by a human. We can imagine a work with a chapter entirely conceived and written by artificial intelligence," Jaenada said.

This year's Goncourt had already been hit by an AI scandal. One of the leading contenders, Haitian-born Canadian author Thelyson Orelien, was disqualified over allegations that he had used a computer program to write his prose.

An AI-detection tool found that more than 95 percent of Orelien's book "It Was That or Death" had been machine-generated.

Orelien denied using AI but admitted that some of his earlier work contained plagiarism.