Philippe Jaenada, Goncourt 2026, wrote a sentence with AI in his book to “play with the reader”

The writer Philippe Jaenada, winner of the 2026 Goncourt Prize for L'Inconnue du quai de Javel, declared on Wednesday that he had slipped a sentence written by AI into his book to "play with the reader" and had used it for research, believing that "we cannot act as if it did not exist".

In an awards season hit by the Thélyson Orélien affair, a Canadian-Haitian author accused of having used artificial intelligence for his novel It Was That or Die, the winner of the Goncourt Prize admitted on France Inter to having used AI "three times" in the process of writing his novel. Philippe Jaenada detailed how he used it for the first time to slip in a sentence written by ChatGPT, in order to “play with the reader”.

He only revealed this sentence to the Goncourt jurors on Tuesday. “If it comes out, I know who it will come from,” he joked. “Another time, to make fun of ChatGPT, which gives completely absurd answers about technical data,” he continued. Finally, the 62-year-old novelist said he used AI for technical research. “I think we can’t repress AI, we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. You have to use it, you have to recognize it, you have to tame it and not let yourself be replaced. It must be useful,” he pleaded.

His epic novel about the unsolved murder of a young Breton woman at the end of the 1940s received the Goncourt Prize. Philippe Jaenada succeeds Laurent Mauvignier, winner of the Goncourt 2025 with La Maison vide, which has since become a huge bookstore success. With L'Inconnue du quai de Javel (Flammarion), the writer continues in the intimate-police vein which allowed him to conquer a loyal readership after Sulak (2013), La Petite Femelle (2015) or La Serpe (2017).

Presented as one of the favorites, Thélyson Orélien's novel was withdrawn from the Goncourt selection and excluded from other literary prizes due to suspicions of the use of AI, an affair which has since shaken up the world of literary creation.