- AI spent years learning how to imitate Molière’s theatrical voice
- Versailles hosted a machine-assisted comedy inspired by 17th-century French theatre
- Scholars rewrote AI-generated scenes thousands of times before public performances
A group of scholars at the Sorbonne University haVE spent two and a half years teaching artificial intelligence to think like Molière, a 17th-century playwright.
The French dramatist is often compared to Shakespeare or Mark Twain for his cultural weight, and although he died in 1673, his distinctive voice now fills a new three‑act comedy, L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages, which premiered on May 6 and 7 2026.
The team fed a French AI tool called Le Chat with everything Molière wrote and extensive historical literary material, a process which involved roughly 20,000 exchanges between researchers, literature scholars, linguists, historians, and the machine.
A two‑hour experiment at Versailles
The play tells a classic Molière‑esque story. A wealthy Parisian father, guided by a fake astrologer named Pseudoramus, forces his daughter to marry an old and debt‑ridden wigmaker.
An audience of 100 people, including the culture minister, saw two performances last week at the Royal Opera inside the Château de Versailles.
One theatregoer called the effort a success. “The plot feels so real, the subject matter is so close to what we’re used to hearing in these plays,” he said.
Each scene went through numerous rewrites, with the director, Mickaël Bouffard, admitting Le Chat’s first draft ran to only eight pages that were “not very interesting.”
Striking but not entirely convincing
Critics have offered mixed reactions to the outcome. While some felt it was a pretty decent work, others believe it is nothing more than ordinary.
Christophe Séfrin, a technology editor, described the AI imitation as “striking, almost disconcerting… entirely believable.”
Telerama, a magazine, called the project a “crazy venture” but noted that the play at times “seems like a pastiche of the playwright’s work.”
However, a member of the audience rejected the entire premise, saying, “A decent writer can do this without artificial intelligence.”
Using AI to imitate Molière would normally cause outrage in France, but the project avoided this because academic experts at the Théâtre Molière Sorbonne run it.
A recent report to the national assembly called generative AI a “marvellous opportunity” but also warned that it “poses a threat to many professions in the cultural sector.”
The report argued for a balance between different forms of creation. The play’s director believes that a balance has been struck.
“We are demonstrating in concrete terms something that can be achieved in a novel way with AI,” he said. “Not a play written by AI, but a play co‑written with it.”
The production now plans to tour across France and travel abroad. Whether audiences outside the Sorbonne will embrace a machine‑assisted Molière remains an open question.
The project’s very existence reveals a deeper tension. AI can store and replicate an entire literary universe, yet the final judgment still belongs to living theatregoers who value human invention over algorithmic pastiche.
Via The Guardian
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