Can A Machine Be Co-Author?

There’s a literary scandal in France this week, and it has to do with AI use: Thélyson Orélien wrote C’était ça ou mourir, the book of the season. It was sold about 50,000 times already, critics are unanimously praising it, the Fnac prize, in the running for the Goncourt, the Médicis and the Femina, three major literary prizes in France. A big deal. Then someone said that they checked the book with Pangram (not sure how unless they typed the book themselves for analysis, but let’s ignore that) and the conclusion was that it was written with AI. Orélien contests it. “I don’t see why I’d turn to a machine,” he says. But his book is now in limbo and it’s not clear what will happen to it or its prizes. The booksellers have said they’ll keep the book on the shelves until somebody proves the hoax officially. Good luck with that. I’m still trying to understand what AI means for creativity and art production, so I’ll think out loud. CPU on which I wrote this Let’s be clear: Orélien isn’t a…