<\/p>\n
What might France’s greatest playwright have written had he not died of tuberculosis in 1673?<\/p>\n
A team of French scholars, researchers and artists have joined forces to tap into the power of artificial intelligence to create a play they say Moliere himself might have written.<\/p>\n
“The Astrologer, or False Omens” is the result of three years of collaboration between the Sorbonne University and Obvious, a French trio of artists and researchers, who have trained AI to imitate Moliere’s style and mastery of satire.<\/p>\n
The playwright, considered the father of modern French comedy, is as central to the nation’s culture as Shakespeare to the English-speaking world — so much so that French refer to their native tongue as the “language of Moliere”.<\/p>\n
Written in 17th\u2011century French, the AI creation will hit the stage at the Royal Opera of Versailles on Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The three\u2011act farce tells the story of a credulous father whose obsession with astrology leads him to force his young daughter to marry an old wigmaker.<\/p>\n
Fidelity to Moliere’s creative process and scholarly rigour were at the heart of the project, said Pierre\u2011Marie Chauvin, a vice president at the Sorbonne.<\/p>\n
“There is no existing protocol for creating a play in the style of Moliere, so we had to devise one, but in the most rigorous way possible, and above all the most faithful,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
The Sorbonne has said the\u00a0“Moliere Ex Machina” project was aimed at “bringing to life a world that never was, but could have been”, and acknowledged its attempt to imitate Moliere “was bold, almost sacrilegious”.<\/p>\n
Chauvin said the success of the project would be measured by its effect on the audience.<\/p>\n
“Does it make people laugh?” he said.<\/p>\n
– AI music and costumes –<\/p>\n
The project is being billed as the first theatrical play written by AI.<\/p>\n
It cost one million euros ($1.2 million), funded by North American donors and a handful of French patrons.<\/p>\n
Researchers worked with Le Chat, a generative AI tool developed by the French start\u2011up Mistral, training it on Moliere’s body of work, as well as dialogues and philosophical treatises.<\/p>\n
The generated text was then reviewed during writing workshops with Coraline Renaux, a doctoral student in literature, and Mickael Bouffard, head of the Theatre Moliere Sorbonne, which seeks to revive theatrical techniques of the 17th century.<\/p>\n
The work was subsequently submitted to reading committees, tasked with checking its syntax and overall coherence.<\/p>\n
“In creating this piece, there were at least 20,000 back-and-forth exchanges between the algorithms and the creative team,” said Gauthier Vernier of Obvious.<\/p>\n
The AI was also trained to create about 15 costumes, as well as music and sets.<\/p>\n
“For each costume, we’d go through around 50 iterations,” said Hugo Caselles\u2011Dupre, also of Obvious.<\/p>\n
“We had a huge number of back-and-forth discussions.”<\/p>\n
– ‘Very human skills’ –<\/p>\n
The theme of astrology emerged fairly quickly, as Moliere was interested in “denouncing human credulity”, Bouffard said.<\/p>\n
“The plot is very Moliere-esque,” said the Quebec native, adding that the name of the father’s astrologer, Pseudoramus \u2013– a pseudo-Nostradamus — was “a clever invention by AI”.<\/p>\n
For the costumes and sets, the technology was trained using sketches by Henri de Gissey, a costume designer and decorator for the court of King Louis XIV.<\/p>\n
Musicologists guided the AI’s musical output using sheet music.<\/p>\n
The stage production involves nine actors, two dancers and four musicians. It showcases wigs, hand-sewn costumes and sets made using period techniques.<\/p>\n
AFP attended a recent rehearsal at the Theatre des Trois Pierrots in Saint-Cloud, west of Paris.<\/p>\n
The plot and dialogue appeared plausible.<\/p>\n
The actors’ use of Classical French and historically faithful declamation could however disorientate some viewers.<\/p>\n
Generative AI tools have surged into prominence in recent years, dramatically reshaping the world.<\/p>\n
The use of artificial intelligence remains one of the most sensitive issues in the entertainment industry and has generated debate.<\/p>\n
But the teams behind the Sorbonne project defend it as an innovative cultural experiment.<\/p>\n
“AI gives us superpowers we don’t have: a universal memory and the ability to write quickly,” said Bouffard.<\/p>\n
Chauvin stressed that humans were still at the heart of the production.<\/p>\n
“We actually saw some truly impressive effects from AI at times, but the overall structure was achieved thanks to human work and very human skills.”<\/p>\n
kp-as\/ah\/jhb<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What might France’s greatest playwright have written had he not died of tuberculosis in 1673? A team of French scholars, researchers and artists have joined forces to tap into the power of artificial intelligence to create a play they say Moliere himself might have written. “The Astrologer, or False Omens” is the result of three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2401545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[344480,468944,468946,468945,468948,468943,468947],"class_list":["post-2401543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-french-scholars","tag-mickael-bouffard","tag-moliere-ex-machina","tag-pierre-marie-chauvin","tag-the-sorbonne","tag-theatre-moliere"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/French-scholars-seek-to-resurrect-Moliere-with-AI-play.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2401547,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401543\/revisions\/2401547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2401545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}