Prix Pascal Launches as First French Literary Prize for AI-Co-Written Books

A new literary prize for books co-written with AI opened for submissions this Tuesday. The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA promises its winner publication, and will announce that winner in early December.

The prize invites unpublished manuscripts of 10,000 to 50,000 words — roughly 40 to 200 pages in a standard paperback — co-written with AI tools. Entrants must disclose which AI model and prompt they used. All major language models qualify, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and LLaMA. Entrants can live anywhere, but entries must be submitted in French.

Who founded the Prix Pascal?

Three technology entrepreneurs launched the prize: Philippe Rodriguez, Albin Serviant and Gilles Mentré. Rodriguez is a founding partner at the mergers-and-acquisitions advisory firm Avolta, which describes him as a "leading figure in the European crypto and blockchain industry". Serviant is a digital media entrepreneur and former chair of the LGBTQ+ magazine Têtu. Mentré is a former civil servant with a PhD in philosophy who teaches at Harvard and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; he also co-founded Electis, an online voting platform.

The name honours Blaise Pascal, the French polymath who helped invent one of the first mechanical calculators and wrote theological texts including the Pensées, which Pope Francis praised for its "philosophical depth and literary charm".

What must the books do?

The terms and conditions ask for a work of fiction. But the prize also states that submitted texts should help solve an ethical, social or ecological problem threatening humanity. That dual requirement makes the Prix Pascal unusual among literary awards: it judges craft and stated social utility at once.

How will the judging work?

Applications close at the end of November. A shortlist of 10 will follow, with the winner announced in early December. The jury of five or six writers, critics, journalists, philosophers and publishers will be named in early November. Entries go through the prize's website.

Why now?

The launch follows months of controversy over suspected AI use by finalists and winners at several literary prizes this year, including the Commonwealth short story prize, the Caine prize and the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award. The Prix Pascal takes the opposite stance: instead of policing AI use, it requires disclosure and rewards it.

The first winner, published and crowned in December, will test whether readers and publishers embrace fiction that openly names its machine collaborator.