Prix Pascal launches a prize that declares AI inside the writing process
The French competition accepts unpublished manuscripts co-written with language models and requires transparency about the method.
The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA opens a new frontier for literary awards: instead of excluding artificial intelligence, it makes AI a declared part of the creative method. Applications opened on 20 October for unpublished works in French of roughly 300,000 characters. Each entrant must submit the manuscript, a “seed” explaining its initial idea, and a technical file listing the model, agents or prompts used. Applicants of any nationality are eligible and no publisher is required. Ten texts will be selected at the end of November; the winner, announced in December, will receive a grant and support toward publication. The prize therefore places a contested question at the centre of literary debate: where does assistance end, and authorship begin?