Pangram founder Max Spero has 'no doubt' about AI use in Thélyson Orélien's best

Pangram founder Max Spero has 'no doubt' about AI use in Thélyson Orélien's best-selling novel

In DepthIn three years, the AI detection tool Pangram has become one of the most effective in its field, sparking several controversies in the United States. According to its creator, Max Spéro, it could come to be 'like a nutrition label' for written prose.

Max Spero immediately got the contentious question out of the way. "I think I've actually never seen such a high degree of Pangram AI score before on a book," said the American, speaking with Le Monde via video call from his bedroom in Brooklyn, New York, shortly after getting out of bed on Thursday, September 24. The book in question was C'était Ça ou Mourir ("It Was That or Dying"), a novel by Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien that has sparked an intense literary controversy in France.

In this matter, Spero's opinion counts for something because he co-founded Pangram Labs in 2023. He is also part of the team of artificial intelligence specialists who developed the latest version, which was made available in July.

His AI detection software was used by an anonymous X user, posting under the name "Balance Ton Claude" ("Expose Your Claude"), to analyze Orélien's book. The account posted screenshots of the program's reports for several parts of the text, which showed a "100%" probability that generative AI software had been used in its creation. The screenshots served as the basis for the Quebecer author's detractors to levy accusations against him.

Spero was not able to read C'était Ça ou Mourir. The engineer, born and raised in New York before attending Stanford University in California to study computer science and artificial intelligence in the 2010s, does not speak French. However, on September 21, he did notice the scale of the controversy as it blew up on X, a social media platform he admits being "a little bit addicted" to. He checks X day and night to follow everything related to Pangram, for which he is the lead developer.

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