Thread

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

36 points · 87 comments · harscoat

breuleux · 1790336370 · focus · HN ↗
To give a bit more information:
* Media ran the entire novel through Pangram and got a 94% AI score [1], whereas all other Goncourt finalists, Haitian/African novels and French classics they tested came out as 100% human. I recall they also tested works specifically from before and after the AI boom and found a shift, but I don't remember where I saw that.
* People on social media, as well as traditional media, have then found cases of blatant plagiarism in Orelien's work a decade ago (this includes one prized short story and several posts to blogs and media) [2]
I think we have to be careful not to assume that tools like Pangram are completely accurate and the word of God, but we can't dismiss them outright, and this particular author's history of plagiarism makes it much harder to give him the benefit of doubt.
[1] (French) <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/fr/nouvelle/2286476/thelyson-orelien-pangram-test-roman-ia" rel="nofollow">https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/fr/nouvelle/2286476/thelyson...
[2] (French) <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...
1. brookst · 1790336569 · focus · HN ↗
  Wouldn’t the French classics have been part of pangram’s training set? That doesn’t seem like strong evidence at all.
  1. breuleux · 1790337351 · focus · HN ↗
    It was relevant in this context because part of Grasset's defence (Grasset being the publisher) was that the Bible and other classics were sometimes flagged as AI by these tools and therefore they are unreliable. So they actually tested it with the same tool and found that it wasn't an issue.
    Comparing to other Haitian authors was also relevant, because another defence from the author was that his "caribbean style" could have tripped up the detector.
    But yes, other than that, that's a good point. My anecdotal evidence is that my own unpublished writing, both in French and English, contains no false positives, but even in that case, that's only evidence that my style isn't AI-adjacent. I'd be curious to see concrete examples of false positives, but it's hard to fully trust these if they don't have proven timestamps.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.