Chinese Nobel laureate Mo Yan shocks audience after revealing he used ChatGPT to write speech

‘I was supposed to write a commendation for [Yu Hua] as per tradition, but I struggled for several days,’ novelist said

Chinese Nobel laureate Mo Yan revealed he used ChatGPT to write a speech to praise fellow author Yu Hua.

This week, the 68-year-old novelist presented a book award to Yu at the Shanghai Dance Centre during the 65th-anniversary celebration of Shouhuo magazine.

“The person who is receiving this award is truly remarkable and, of course, he is also my good friend. He is extraordinary, so I must be too,” Mo said during his speech.

“A few days ago, I was supposed to write a commendation for him as per tradition, but I struggled for several days and couldn’t come up with anything. So I asked a doctoral student to help me by using ChatGPT.”

According to South China Morning Post, there was an “audible gasp” from the audience when they found out that the Nobel Prize winner crafted his speech using artificial intelligence.

The Independent attempted reaching out to Mo’s representatives for comment.

Mo is a Chinese novelist and short story writer.

In 2012, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work as a writer “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary”.

(AFP via Getty Images)

He is best known to global readers for his 1986 novel Red Sorghum, the first two parts of which were adapted into the Golden Bear-winning film of the same name.

The author won the 2005 International Nonino Prize in Italy. In 2009, he was the first recipient of the University of Oklahoma’s Newman Prize for Chinese Literature.

So far, Mo has written 11 novels, and several novellas and short story collections.

A video of Mo’s speech at the Shanghai Dance Centre has gone viral on the Chinese microblogging website Weibo.

In the comments section, some people pointed out that Mo could face legal trouble for mentioning ChatGPT as the service has not yet been made available in China.