Paris (France) (AFP) – French writer Philippe Jaenada, Goncourt 2026 prize for “L'Inconnue du quai de Javel” defended on Friday an “amused”, “ironic” and very limited use of artificial intelligence in his book after the sidelining of the writer Thélyson Orélien for his use of AI.

Published on: 06/11/2026 - 22:10 Modified on: 06/11/2026 - 23:13

“It is ridiculously absurd to think for half a second that I used generative AI to write anything in this book,” argued the author in a press release sent to AFP by his publishing house, Flammarion, where he details how he used this technology.

“The amused or ironic, above all assumed, use of AI was also part of my project before I even started writing,” he insisted.

Philippe Jaenada has repeated that he used AI only three times for his epic novel about the unsolved murder of a young Breton woman at the end of the 1940s which received the Goncourt Prize and in which he also mentions the use of this technology.

The author first asked two artificial intelligence chatbots “what dries faster at night, at 17°C, with little wind: the long hair of a young brunette woman or the Parisian pavement?”, he said in the press release.

“The two software programs provide me with caricaturally precise, therefore stupid, and contradictory answers,” he added.

The writer then used AI in a more traditional way to do research.

“I was trying to find out if a corpse’s fingers wrinkle when they are left to soak in hot water, like ours, the living,” he said.

Philippe Jaenada finally says he had fun “hiding a sentence generated by AI in the text”.

“It is, therefore, half a sentence, ten words. I have received, since the publication of + L’Inconnue du quai de Javel +, dozens of proposals from readers: no one has found it,” continued the author.

Philippe Jaenada thus used AI in the sentence "believing does not eat bread, but it does not put any on the table either", page 215 of the work, he revealed Friday evening on RTL, saying he wanted to put an end to the controversy "where they say that I used AI to write my book".

Voices were raised on social networks to denounce a certain paradox between the fact that Philippe Jaenada obtained the Goncourt prize by claiming his use of AI when the Canadian-Haitian author Thélyson Orélien was excluded from the same prize due to suspicions of massive use of AI for his novel "It was that or die".

The Thélyson Orélien affair caused shock waves in the world of publishing, opening a debate on the place of AI in creation.

© 2026 AFP

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