A new French literary prize will accept, and require disclosure of, manuscripts written with the help of artificial intelligence, according to Times Now. The Prix Pascal opens for submissions on 2 November 2026 and asks entrants to explain exactly how AI shaped their work, a condition that sets it apart from prizes that have tried to detect or ban machine-assisted writing altogether.
Times Now reported that the competition was announced in October 2026 and is open internationally, provided manuscripts are written in French. Applicants must submit an original work, an initial creative concept and a technical dossier explaining which AI models, prompts or agents they used, according to the outlet.
A five-member jury drawn from literary and intellectual professions will assess the entries, Times Now reported, with a winner expected to be announced in early December. The organisers also intend to arrange publication of the winning manuscript.
What the judges are looking for
The prize is not simply rewarding fluent machine-generated prose. According to its official manifesto, as reported by Times Now, the winning work should offer an original contribution to understanding or addressing ecological, social or ethical challenges. The organisers say they want to recognise creative possibilities that might not emerge through conventional writing alone.
Times Now noted that the prize takes its name from Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher who built an early mechanical calculator while also producing influential philosophical writing, a pairing the organisers use to link technological invention with human reflection.
Disclosure instead of detection
Times Now placed the Prix Pascal against a backdrop of what it described as increasing scrutiny of AI's presence in creative writing, noting that recent controversies around literary competitions have shown how allegations of undisclosed AI use can damage an author's reputation even when the evidence is contested. The French competition takes a different approach: participants must disclose their technological methods rather than leave readers and judges guessing, according to the outlet.
Times Now cautioned that disclosure does not resolve every ethical question. It pointed to unresolved issues around the copyrighted material used to train AI systems, the economic consequences for professional writers, and whether machine-generated language can reproduce literary conventions without genuinely advancing them.
For working writers, the prize puts a concrete frame around a question that has so far been argued mostly in the abstract: whether supplying the idea behind AI-generated sentences counts as authorship, and whether readers judge a finished work differently once they know how it was made. Times Now wrote that many readers approach fiction not merely for entertainment but for an encounter with another person's experiences, observations and understanding of life, a standard the prize will test directly once its first winner is announced in early December.
Submissions open on 2 November 2026.
Sources
Every quotation and figure in this article is checked against the source reporting linked above before publication. How we report