AI tools refuse to write in style of controversial French author Michel Houellebecq, publisher says
The world's favourite French misanthrope writer Michel Houellebecq is too controversial for the world's new AI tools, which find his views so offensive that they cannot be repeated.
The president of renowned French publishing house Gallimard wrote an article published Thursday in La Nouvelle Revue Francaise saying he had asked Meta's AI tool, Llama, to write a scene in the style of Houellebecq.
Llama responded in French that it could not write something considered "offensive or discriminatory".
Instead, it offered in English to write a scene that was "respectful and inclusive" such as a "group of friends in the park on a sunny afternoon" who sing songs "to celebrate the beauty of diversity".
Houellebecq, arguably France's biggest literary star internationally, is known for novels with a deeply pessimistic view of the modern world, in which the sexual revolution, consumerism and globalisation have led to alienation and societal decline.
Antoine Gallimard wrote in the article that the AI was failing to account for "the complexity of human experience" and was applying values "from the west coast of the United States to say what is good and what is not good to think."
(AFP)
Read more on FRANCE 24 English
Read also:
Michel Houellebecq goes missing
New novel by controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq is a national event
Michel Houellebecq's new novel 'Submission' unleashes Islamophobia row
