A prize for AI-written books has launched this week.
The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication.
Entrants are asked to submit an unpublished manuscript of between 10,000 and 50,000 words, along with information about which AI model and prompt were used to generate the text. All major language models are allowed, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and LLaMA. Entrants can be based anywhere, but entries must be submitted in French.
The Prix Pascal is named after Blaise Pascal, a French polymath who helped invent one of the first mechanical calculators and also wrote theological texts, including Pensées, which Pope Francis praised for its “philosophical depth and literary charm”.
While the terms and conditions ask for a work of fiction, the prize also states that submitted texts should help solve an ethical, social or ecological problem threatening humanity. The prize was founded by Philippe Rodriguez, Albin Serviant and Gilles Mentré, all of whom are technology entrepreneurs.
Rodriguez is a founding partner at the mergers and acquisitions advisory firm Avolta, and is described as a “leading figure in the European crypto and blockchain industry” on the company’s website. Serviant is a digital media entrepreneur and former chair of the LGBTQ+ magazine Têtu. Meanwhile, Mentré is a former civil servant with a PhD in philosophy who teaches at Harvard and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Mentré also co-founded Electis, an online voting platform.
The Prix Pascal is launching after months of controversy over the possible use of AI by finalists and winners for a number of literary prizes this year, including the Commonwealth short story prize, the Caine prize and the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize.
Applications for the Prix Pascal opened on Tuesday, with entrants invited to submit via the prize’s website, and are set to close at the end of November. A shortlist of 10 will be drawn up before the winner is announced in early December. The jury will be made up of a panel of five or six writers, critics, journalists, philosophers and publishers, to be announced early November.