AI prize-winning novel controversy: author's pre-AI 2013 piece also found plagiarized

mattsclancy · x · 2026-09-23

Writer Charles C. Mann weighs in on the fight over a French-Canadian author who supposedly wrote a prize-worthy novel with AI: a critic went back and found the author's 2013 pre-AI piece was itself plagiarized. "I have no dog in this fight, but as a writer I'm of course fascinated," Mann says.

A reply adds the best detail: the copied translation included a pun on "coming out of the woodwork" riffing on the original author's last name (Woods) — machine-translated straight across, making no sense in the French context — solid evidence of pre-AI plagiarism.

Related event: French Award-Winning Novel Suspected AI-Written as Author's Plagiarism Past Resurfaces(8 posts)→

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