Thread

Uproar in France over award-winning author accused of using AI

36 points · 87 comments · harscoat

_diyar · 1790334434 · focus · HN ↗
This story smells odd; why does anybody care about the accusations of an anonymous twitter account? A claim seemingly without evidence no less.
1. pluc · 1790334682 · focus · HN ↗
  Because it's an anonymous twitter account dedicated to scanning and identifying AI usage in published works?
  1. jalev · 1790334935 · focus · HN ↗
    An account that has only existed for 4 months, whose only source for whenever something is plagiarised is a single company whose bread and butter is telling everybody what they want to hear, where most of the tweets barely gets a hundred likes should not be getting the level of coverage it has right now.
    <a href="https://x.com/Pangramed" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/Pangramed
    stef25 · 1790335454 · focus · HN ↗
    By all means test it out with some non-AI content and report back
    pluc · 1790335497 · focus · HN ↗
    I guess you can pick between that and the propaganda provided by the AI peddlers, they surely have nothing to gain telling everybody what they want to hear
  2. _diyar · 1790430228 · focus · HN ↗
    No, according to the NYT article it is because a journalist behind this anon twitter account signal-boosted this:
    > The controversy grew out of accusations from a little-followed, anonymous social media account, which a columnist at Le Figaro, a conservative daily newspaper, later revealed he partly ran.
    <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/world/europe/thelyson-orelien-ai-canada-haiti-france.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/world/europe/thelyson-ore...
2. sigmar · 1790335293 · focus · HN ↗
  >He is also a finalist for the most prestigious annual French language awards, the Goncourt and the Renaudot, set to be issued soon.
  If I had a book that was hoping to win this award, anonymous accusations like this seem like a pretty easy way to shift the odds. It's impossible for the author to disprove the allegations and the award committee will want to 'avoid controversy'
  1. conradfr · 1790335449 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, he has been evicted from the Goncourt.
3. suddenlybananas · 1790335914 · focus · HN ↗
  He's been revealed as a flagrant plagiarist [1] and there's a lot of evidence that his writing before 2023 had very low pangram scores, and the other authors nominated did not have high pangram scores.
  [1] <a href="https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/litterature/2026-09-23/thelyson-orelien-rattrape-par-un-passe-de-plagiaire.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/litterature/2026-09-23/thelyson...

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.