The novel C’était ça ou mourir, by Quebec writer Thélyson Orélien, has become one of the major literary phenomena of the 2026 French rentrée littéraire: tens of thousands of copies sold, literary prizes, nominations for some of France’s most prestigious awards, and critics largely won over by the quality of the work. Yet the apparent triumph was not to last.
Controversy arose following allegations concerning the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the writing of the novel, leading to its withdrawal, on 25 September, from the Académie Goncourt’s selection for the prestigious Prix Goncourt.
Beyond the disagreement it occasioned, particularly on the part of the writer who rejects it, this episode brings into focus a fundamental philosophical question concerning intellectual property: is a conception of copyright centred on the author, whose foundations have already been challenged by the theories of the so-called “death of the author”, still adequate to a digital society in which new forms of cultural production emerge and acquire value?
1. What is rewarded and what is protected: the work or the author?
The Prix Goncourt performs a function of cultural consecration, whereas copyright operates differently. The prize recognises a literary work while simultaneously honouring the author to whom it is attributed. The authenticity of the relationship between the individual and the work therefore forms part of the prize’s institutional significance. Copyright, however, follows a different logic.
Article L.112-1 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle (CPI) provides that works of the mind are protected irrespective of their genre, form of expression, merit or purpose. Copyright does not therefore protect literary quality.
This neutrality towards merit does not, however, entail neutrality towards authorship. Article L.111-1 confers upon the author, by virtue of the mere fact of creation, an exclusive intangible property right. Copyright protection thus presupposes a prior operation: identifying a creation and attributing it to a person.
The Académie Goncourt and copyright law therefore attribute different forms of significance to the author. For the former, authorship is closely connected to the cultural recognition of a literary work; for the latter, authorship determines the legal subject to whom rights are attributed. Both nevertheless rely on the attribution of a work to a person, although they do so for fundamentally different purposes.
Roland Barthes’s thesis of the “death of the author” challenges the centrality of the author in cultural production by shifting attention to the text itself, whose capacity to generate meaning is no longer anchored in the identity or intention of its creator, but in the reader. Although Barthes does not address copyright law, his argument provides a useful conceptual lens through which to question a legal framework that places the author at its centre.
AI makes these questions concrete, bringing the tension between the work and its author into sharper relief.
2. French case law and the persistence of the human author
French case law has consistently associated authorship in copyright law with a human creator, particularly since the early 2010s. This approach can be illustrated by three significant cases.
First, in its judgment of 14 November 2013, case no. 12-20.687, concerning the requirements for an author’s intervention to be sufficiently creative, the Cour de cassation addressed the originality of a computer programme. The Cour referred to the need for an “effort personnalisé allant au-delà de la simple mise en œuvre d’une logique automatique et contraignante”, namely a personalised effort going beyond the mere implementation of an automatic and constraining logic. The decision is particularly significant in this context because it links originality to a contribution that exceeds the mere execution of predetermined logic.
Second, two years later, in its judgment of 15 January 2015, case no. 13-23.566, the Cour de cassation held that “une personne morale ne peut avoir la qualité d’auteur”. Authorship is therefore reserved to natural persons. The decision is significant because it distinguishes authorship from ownership: a legal person may hold or exploit economic rights, but does not, by that fact alone, acquire the status of author.
More recently, in a decision of 29 May 2026, in case no. 24/09710, the Paris Judicial Court considered the relevance of technological assistance to the personal nature of creative choices. The Court held that, where a creation had been assisted by modelling software, “le fait que cette création ait été assistée d’un logiciel de modélisation est sans effet sur le caractère personnel de ces choix ”. In other words, the use of modelling software does not, in itself, prevent the creative choices embodied in the work from being regarded as personal choices of the human creator. The same court has reaffirmed that “seule une personne physique peut avoir la qualité d’auteur”. This decision is particularly relevant because it confirms that the mere involvement of technology does not displace human authorship where the relevant creative choices remain attributable to a natural person.
The approach of the French Courts is consistent with the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Indeed, in Infopaq (C-5/08) and Painer (C-145/10), the CJEU linked copyright protection to the author’s own intellectual creation and emphasised the role of free and creative choices.
Taken together, these decisions provide a relatively clear framework: a natural person, a creative contribution, personal choices and originality. It is precisely this framework that AI places under pressure. The main question is whether the category of the author still adequately captures how works are produced today.
3. From copyright to a possible droit des oeuvres
Under French law, a book produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence may qualify as a work of the mind where it embodies sufficiently original human creative choices. Conversely, where a book is autonomously generated by AI without sufficient human creative intervention, the resulting production may fall outside the scope of copyright protection.
How, then, should the law address an AI-generated production that possesses considerable commercial value, even though no individual has made a sufficient creative contribution to satisfy the current criteria of originality? The market may attribute substantial economic value to the production; copyright law may nevertheless afford it no exclusive protection.
This raises a tension between two functions that have historically been accommodated within the same legal framework: protecting the personal relationship between a creator and a work through moral rights, while simultaneously enabling the economic exploitation of that work through economic rights. Where no human author can be identified, these two functions may no longer necessarily point towards the same legal solution.
This tension may be addressed in, at least, three different ways.
A first response would be to preserve the current system in its entirety: without a sufficient human creative contribution to the AI-generated expression, that expression would not attract copyright protection. This solution has the advantage of doctrinal coherence. It preserves the connection between originality, human creativity and authorship, while avoiding the need to attribute authorship to an entity that cannot exercise the personal rights traditionally associated with it. Its drawback, however, is that it leaves potentially valuable AI-generated productions entirely outside the copyright framework, thereby raising questions about whether the existing categories remain adequate for forms of production that can generate substantial economic value without a sufficiently identifiable human author.
A second possibility would be to introduce sui generis protection for certain AI-generated productions that lack the requisite human authorship. Such protection could be limited in scope and predominantly economic in nature, addressing the exploitation of the production without necessarily conferring upon any person the moral rights traditionally associated with authorship. This approach would recognise the economic significance of AI-generated outputs while maintaining a clear distinction between economic protection and the personal relationship that underpins copyright authorship.
A third solution would be to recognise a layered form of protection. Under such an approach, elements generated autonomously by AI would remain outside the scope of copyright protection, while elements resulting from sufficiently original human choices would remain eligible for protection. Copyright would therefore attach not necessarily to the production as a whole, but to those aspects of it that can be attributed to a protectable human creative contribution. The question would consequently shift from “Who is the author of the work?” to “Which elements of the work result from a sufficiently original human creative contribution to attract copyright protection?”
This third approach would retain the fundamental principles of French copyright law while acknowledging that contemporary creative production may involve different degrees of human and machine contribution. It would also avoid treating the involvement of AI as an all-or-nothing question: the relevant legal inquiry would instead be the identification and assessment of the human creative choices embodied in the resulting production.
Final considerations
The Goncourt Academy’s decision shows that the concept of the author has not become obsolete. It also demonstrates that authorship is not merely a legal category, but reflects broader social and cultural expectations concerning creation and attribution.
At the same time, a book may exist, circulate and generate considerable value without a human author to whom its entire form can be attributed.
The challenge is therefore to consider whether, alongside copyright, a legal framework should be developed to protect valuable AI-generated productions without artificially conferring authorship where no sufficient human creative contribution exists.
